Mass media: sex and violence

The Newson Report

Professor Elizabeth Newson, formerly of Nottingham University, was asked by David Alton MP, a long-time campaigner against violence in video material, to prepare a report in support of his amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill.

Prof. Newson presented her Report Video Violence and the Protection of Children in April 1994, after which she gave oral evidence to the Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee.

Her evidence gained enormous media attention and was said in many news articles at the time to have conclusively established a link between video violence and real-world violence. In part the media attention was due to the fact that the report was published only shortly after the end of the trial of two ten-year-old boys who had killed the two-year-old Jamie Bulger in 1993. There had been great interest in 'video nasties' during the trial because the jusge had mentioned videos the boys might have seen as a possible reason behind the murder and The Sun had claimed that Child's Play 3 was the video the boys had seen. There was in fact no evidence that the boys had seen any such videos.

Her report consisted of an overview of research reports from around the world which take the view that the link between television violence and real-world violence is proven. She also discussed the difference between 'correlation' and 'causation'. Many researchers who have identified a correlation between television violence and real-world violence have emphasized, rightly, that a correlation does not in itself establish that television violence causes violence in the real-world. Professor Newson, however, makes the point that only a correlation has been established between smoking and lung cancer. It would not be correct, as she points out, to say that it has been established that smoking causes lung cancer because the mechanism has not been explained. All that has been established is that people who smoke tend to get lung cancer. Nevertheless, the correlation is so strong and consistent that everyone, except representatives of the tobacco industry, accepts that smoking causes lung cancer.

Professor Newson clams that the correlations between TV violence and real-world violence are even stronger than that between smoking and lung cancer. She cites statements by official bodies from around the world in support of her view. These include:

• Select Committee, National Institute of Mental Health, USA, 1992, which saw the research question as having moved from whether or not there is an effect to seeking explanations for the effect.
• American Psychologist Association
• US Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, 1985, which concluded that there were clear links between violent sexually explicit material and harm to women and children
• Australian Joint Select Committee on video material, 1988
• Ministerial Committee of Inquiry, New Zealand, 1989

Further, Professor Newson supports her conclusions by a review of existing literature, including the Belson study, referred to in the section on Social surveys of violence. On the whole, though, the report does not appear to justify the attention the media paid to it nor the seriousness with it was treated by the 'serious' press.

Her 'report', in fact a short essay, reiterated a set of dog-eared behaviourist assumptions and research findings that are not difficult to refute since they reduce immeasurable problems of interpretation and meaning to behavioural responses that can be measured. The experimental method of psychological 'effects' research has to eliminate the semiotic complexity of media texts by reducing them to transparent 'messages', and, in consequence, fails to grasp the interpretive process, how children actually make sense of fiction and distinguish fantasy from reality.

McGuigan (1996) 170

Source: Newson (1994)

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