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Concerns about the negative effects of prolonged exposure to violent television programming emerged shortly after broadcasting began in 1946. By 1972 sufficient empirical evidence had accumulated for the US. Surgeon General to comment that "...televised violence, indeed, does have an adverse effect on certain members of our society" (1). Other scientific bodies have come to similar conclusions. Six major professional societies in the United States-the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Psychiatric Association-recently concluded that "the data point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children" (2). In a report on page 2468 of this issue, Johnson and colleagues (3) present important evidence showing that extensive TV viewing among adolescents and young adults is associated with subsequent aggressive acts.
Despite the consensus among experts, lay people do not seem to be getting the message from the popular press that media violence contributes to a more violent society. We recently demonstrated that even as the scientific evidence linking media violence to aggression has accumulated, news reports about the effects of media violence have shifted to weaker statements, implying that there is little evidence for such effects (4). This inaccurate reporting in the popular press may account for continuing controversy long after the debate should have been over, much as the cigarette smoking/cancer controversy persisted long after the scientific community knew that smoking causes cancer.
Aggression researchers have adopted a triangulation strategy to examine the effects of violence in the media. Specifically, divergent research methods have been applied in the belief that using several unique...