opinion

Aggression and television

by Raúl Leis R. --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

Most people, whether adults or minors, can't even imagine living without television. But a substatial part of many channels is programming plagued by physical, verbal, sexual or psychological violence. To consume high levels of televised violence is as harmful to boys and girls as it is to drink or smoke.

On the average, the TV is on in homes more than seven hours a day. Many kids sit in front of the screen for the equivalent of some 150 school days per year.

Various studies (for example, Gelles and Levine) prove that the most aggressive boys in the classroom were watching the most violent TV programs. The kids learn aggressive standards of comportment and recreate the scenes, especially if in the show the violent behavior is rewarded. Later, the boys resort to these behaviors by responding aggressively when they confront a situation. The way to resolve conflicts by physicial force has been taught to them, and that includes the notion that positive heroes must fight violently for their rights. The messages that harm young television viewers the most are not necessarily the bloodiest ones, but those in which the violent one is rewarded for the violence exercised because of whatever justified the aggression.

The proof is definitive and nobody can deny that TV has a great influence on behaviors and attitudes, but family vigilance is ever more absent, given that the parents are busy outside the home or are not conscious of the problem. Violent TV today is more a problem of public health than of creative freedom.

José Olivari writes, in his “Charter of Rights of the Television Viewer,” that:

The television viewers have the right to access to programs that rescue the identity and richness of the cultural and artistic heritage of our society, in prime time. The broadcast of television programs determined only by consumption and the market contributes to the loss of historical memory and of people's own cultural identity. In the face of this reality the participation of a multicultural society in cultural production serves as the basis to strengthen a democratic representation of society, and the replanting of the same notion of culture in the national community.

The television viewers have the right to receive content and themes with which it's easy to identify and which contribute to reflection. The values, concepts and world views transmitted by television can contribute in great measure to the formation of a critical point of view by the viewers when they are pursued from a perspective of non-violation of the viewer's privacy.

It's important to establish defenses for television viewers, radio listeners and the readers of magazines and newspapers, all of which are absent in our Panama. Their mission would be to protect and guarantee the rights of the media's receivers and consumers; to attend to their complaints, questions doubts and suggestions; and to see that the management of forms and content in the media conform to communicative ethics.

Consuelo Cepeda, the viewers' advocate for the Colombian RCN network, gives this example of the work that this office does:

Three years have passed since the creation of the viewers' advocate, a triennial through which the television viewers have assumed their rights as an audience, rights that have definitively made them feel a part of “our TV,” as all the claims have not only been listened to an analyzed, but also because transcendent decisions have been taken within Canal RCN on the basis of complaints by the telespectators: real-life stories are not recorded without the previous authorization of their protagonists; the news has used images of ordinary Colombians, which have had to be modified, clarified or rectified when one of the viewers has considered that the right to his or her own image has been violated. Programs with highly violent content like “Unidad Investigativa” or “Pandillas Guerra y Paz” have been moved to late night hours with the aim of not offending or injuring the sensitivities. The boys and girls of Colombia are at the present time the most delicate spectators for Canal RCN, and thus we protect their privacy and anonymity in news that has directly to do with them, covering their faces or managing in a very subtle way their inclusion within the news.

If we recall the first news broadcasts, scenes of deaths, injuries and licentious declarations that made for pure yellow journalism in the news come to mind. Today, after much work interacting with the TV audience and with the channel's directors, it's impossible to go back and see this type of reporting. Reality shows, which at one time caused scandals because of sexual themes and the conduct of the private lives of the contestants, now center their content on healthy competitions, sometimes by actors and other tiems --- as we recently saw on “La Isla de los Famosos ---  on learning how to subsist. Left behind are the bedroom scenes, the aggressive dialogues, the provocative scenes and those that incite sickness.

But when will we put the bell on the cat?