1. VIOLENT CRIME: HOMICIDE RATES ARE UNRELATED TO MEDIA CONSUMPTION

Today, 98% of American homes have a TV set, and 40% have three or more; VCRs are a feature in 84% of American households.' Twice as many videotapes are rented daily as books checked out of the public library.' Video games have become a $6 billion industry, with rentals increasing 50%, to $804 million, from 1997 to 1998 alone.

Aside from the increase in the number of media products and outlets-Web sites, TV channels, movies and games-some surveys show that there is more violence in these products than in the past. According to the 1998 University of California/Santa Barbara's National Television Violence Study, the percentage of programs from 1994 to 1997 that contain violence during prime time rose 14% on network TV and 10% on cable. (Studies conflict, however; some report drops in media violence during the same periods while others find rises.)"

But all statistics on crime point in the same direction. Violent crime by both adults and youth has declined dramatically in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 1998, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey of the U.S. Justice Department, violent crime rates fell 27% and property crime rates dropped 32%. That represents the lowest level recorded since the survey's inception in 1973.11 Violent crime committed by children and teens is at its lowest since 1987 and has fallen 30% from 1994 to 1998. The arrest rate for weapons violations among juveniles also saw a 33% drop between 1993 and 1998. And school violence-fights, injuries and weapons carried through the doors-has been falling steadily since 1991, according to studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"No doubt violence on television and in the movies heightens aggression among some people some of the time," the eminent criminologist James Q. Wilson commented. "But we have virtually no evidence that it affects the serious crime rate."

In 1949 fewer than 10% of American homes had a television. At the turn of the 21st century, as noted, almost everyone has at least one set. Maybe it's logical that the tube has been blamed for just about everything that's gone wrong in the last half-century. One researcher who set out to prove this culpability was University of Washington epidemiologist Brandon S. Centerwall. And as recently as 1999, he was being quoted in such influential publications as the Senate Judiciary Committee's report on children and violence, which elevated his conjecture to a "finding": "[If] hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults. Violent crime would be half what it is."" Centerwall extrapolated these estimates from figures of TV ownership and homicide in four countries after World War II. Three of the nations enjoyed steady rises in TV ownership during the period, but in the fourth, South Africa, televisions were banned until 1975. Using South Africa as a control, he concluded that "the introduction of television [into Canada and the U.S. caused a subsequent doubling of (their) homicide rates."

Centerwall's sweeping claims drew much criticism, but the most devastating rebuttal came from criminologists Frank Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, both of the University of California's Earl Warren Legal Institute. Using Centerwall's methodology, they continued to chart TV ownership and lethal crime in Centerwall's four countries for the years following his inquiries, and they added postwar statistics for France, Germany, Italy and Japan. On these graphs, while the number of TVs climbs with regularity, the crime rates rise and fall irregularly in each country throughout the period. Centerwall's thesis failed to pass its own test and was, quite simply, demolished.

Machete hackings in Rwanda, lethal stoning of women under Afghanistan's Taliban, murder and kidnaping in Colombia, street crime in Haiti-in these countries, people have had little exposure to media. More plausible reasons for this violence are political and religious strife and repression, drug trafficking and poverty.