Media Violence

            For more five decades, worlds have been concerned about the frequent depiction of violence in the mass media and the harm these portrayals might do to youth. Reflecting this concern, several major United States Government investigations and reports have examined the research on the associations between youthful media consumers exposure to television violence and their aggressive behavior.

            Six medical and public health professional organizations held a Congressional Public Health Summit on July 26, 2000, and issued a Joint Statement on the impact of Entertainment Violence on Children. This statement noted that “entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior particularly in children.” The statement also concluded that the research point “ overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.”. These reports coupled with mounting public concern, stimulated a search for ways to reduce the adverse effect of media violence, and were responsible, in part for the passage of the telecommunications Act (Unite State of America) of 1996, which mandated the new TV sets be manufactured with a V(for violence)-chip that permits parents to block objectionable content.

The War Of the World

Shortly after 8 o’clock on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938, many Americans became anxious or panic-stricken after listening to a realistic live one-hour radio play depicting a fictitious Martian landing at the Wilmuth farm in the tiny hamlet of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Those living in the immediate vicinity of the bogus invasion appeared to have been most frightened, although the broadcast could be heard in all regions of the continental United States and no one particular location was immune. The play included references to real places, buildings, highways, and streets. The broadcast also contained prestigious speakers, convincing sound effects, and realistic special bulletins. The drama was produced by a 23-year-old theatrical prodigy named George Orson Welles (1915-1985), who was accompanied by a small group of actors and musicians in a New York City studio of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s Mercury Theater. The actual broadcast script was written by Howard Koch, who loosely based it on the 1898 book The War of the Worlds by acclaimed science fiction writer Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (1866-1946). In the original Wells novel, the Martians had landed in nineteenth century Woking, England. Sixty years after the 1938 event, it remains arguably the most widely known delusion in United States, and perhaps world history, and many radio stations around the world continue to broadcast the original play each Halloween eve.