Much research has gone into showing why our society is so mesmerized by this glowing box and the action that takes place within it. Only a mere sixty years ago the invention of the television was viewed as a technological breakthrough with black and white ghost-like figures on the screen so small, hardly anyone could see them. Today that curiosity has become a constant companion to 90% of the American population (Sherrow 26), mainly, children and teenagers. Unfortunately, it is these violent programs that are endangering our present-day society. Violent images on television, as well as in the movies, have inspired people to set spouses on fire

A public boycott of violent programming, lyrics, and movies, apparently, is the only way to make the “production staffs accept media violence first and foremost as potentially damaging, rather than regarding it principally as potential entertainment” (Belson 527). Only when the public is able to change the current attitudes of the media on the topic of aggression and television, can a plan to produce more beneficial and useful forms of television content be implemented (Brown 259).

Even more ironic is the fact that The National Broadcasting Network (NBC) funded one such report. The NBC funded report claims that their study “did not find any evidence that, over the time periods studied, television was causally implicated in the development of aggressive behavior patterns among children and adolescents” (Milavsky 489). In a CBS study, the network “succeeded in reducing the amount of violence reported by excluding a significant (and unreported) amount of violent representation” (Chaffee 33).

in their beds, lie down in the middle of highways, extort money by placing bombs in airplanes, rape, steal, murder, and commit numerous other shootings and assaults. (Brown 78)

Despite the negative effects media violence has been known to generate, no drastic changes have been made to deal with this problem that seems to be getting worse. We, as a whole, have glorified this violence so much that movies like “Natural Born Killers” and television shows such as “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” are viewed as normal, everyday entertainment. It is even rare now to find a children’s cartoon that does not depict some type of violence or comedic aggression.

A recent report from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) pooled evidence from over 2,500 studies within the last decade. The studies were done on over 100,000 subjects from several nations. The compiled evidence of the media’s influence on behavior is so “overwhelming” that there is a consensus in the research community that “violence in the media does lead to aggressive behavior” (Methvin 49). Given that the majority of scientific community agrees that “the research findings of the NIMH publication support conclusion of a causal relationship between television violence and publication aggressive behavior (Wurtzel 21), why is it that “the Saturday morning cartoons” are the most violent time slot on television?” (Methvin 49) “Despite slight variations over the past decade, the amount of violence in the media has remained at consistently high levels” (Wurtzel 23).

Harry Skornia claims “it is naïve and romantic to expect a corporation to have either a heart or a soul in the struggle for profits and survival”(34). But who, then, is to take responsibility for the media’s actions if not the industry itself? Because there has not been any sufficient answers to this question so far, “Media violence has not diminished greatly; nor have Saturday morning programs for children, marked by excessively violent cartoons, changed much

Some topics in this essay:
, Michael Howe, Health NIMH, Network NBC, Company ABC, Communications Commission, Power Rangers”, Unlike NIMH, Medical Association, CBS NBC, media violence, television violence, aggressive behavior, broadcasting companies, amount violence, violent programming, harmful effects, behavior children, american medical association, american medical, medical association, harmful effects viewers, abc cbs nbc, hostile behavior children, federal communications commission,