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In years’ past, residents of the Flathead Valley rarely had to worry about violent crime. After all, that sort of thing doesn’t happen here. Everybody knew that murder is a problem of big cities, not small, conservative towns.
Not any more.
Since 1990, at least 19 people have been the victims of deliberate homicide. At least three murders during 1998 alone were allegedly commited by Bigfork area teenagers. So where has this rash of violence come from?
Many Americans blame the media. Movies and television programs that portray violence without consequences and television news programs that constantly report murders and crime sprees across the nation could either desensitize kids to violence or give them ideas of violence of their own.
Government officials were threatening to regulate the television industry if it didn’t regulate itself through a ratings system. The ratings mean little, unfortunately, and don’t keep kids from watching T.V. they may not be prepared to handle. Our Constitution, however, protects freedom of speech, and a fine line usually exist between excessive violence and violence that is necessary to report a story and convey a theme.
Censorship isn’t the answer. We can’t violate the most sacred of our rights to protect our children. Democracy is about responsibility — our responsibility to ourselves and to fellow citizens as much as the government’s responsibility to us. Is it the fault of the auto maker if you drive too fast and crash or the fault of the pharmacy if you fail to follow your prescription and overdose on pills?
Of course not.
Television and movies give the public what it wants, whether it’s violence and sex or Snow White. The nature of our nation gives us the freedom, and the responsibility, to drive what we want, eat what we want — and watch what we want.
Most high-schoolers and adults are mature enough to deal with the differences between reality and entertainment. But children are different. Kids see the actions of characters on TV. They get the attitude that if others are doing something, they can do it too.
Children have seen countless television programs where violence is the only solution. The “good guys” are free to bend, break or ignore laws without fear of reprisal. Murder often goes unpunished, and all our problems are solved in two hours or less, anyway.
Few people will try to claim that television is an accurate representation of life, but children are far more susceptible to that what they see than adults. In 1987, when a remote region of British Columbia that previously had no television reception finally got their own station, schoolyard violence increased perceptibly. Within weeks, kids were imitating their favorite violent programs and cartoon characters.
Of course, there is no way to tell how much a certain child will be affected by what he or she watches; scientists are just beginning to understand the effects of television on developing brains. However, the responsibility of raising decent, law-abiding children lies with the parents or guardians of that child.
We can’t expect the government to solve the problem of kids watching, imitating and being desesitized to violence on T.V. We need to expect parents to take responsibility for their own children.
Parents need to control what their kids are watching — and turn off the T.V. |
