Copyright 1996 Guardian Newspapers Limited

The Observer

June 2, 1996, Sunday

SECTION: THE OBSERVER NEWS PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 1067 words

HEADLINE: 'REACTIONARY' ACADEMICS GAGGED IN STORM OVER TV CENSORSHIP

BYLINE: Nick Cohen

BODY:

ACADEMIC opponents of television censorship stand accused of forgetting their principles and suppressing the work of colleagues who suggest that screen violence can affect children.

Even by the rough standards of the world of cultural studies, the argument is bitter. 'I very much regret that academics I have respected are resorting to such silly behaviour,' said Martin Barker, co -editor of a book on media censorship, Ill Effects, after hearing that two contributors had gone to the press with their complaint.

Mr Barker, who teaches at the University of the West of England, in Bristol, believes newspapers have wildly exaggerated the dangers of television corrupting the young. He brought together a band of media academics and said they should intervene in the debate and fight to stem the 'moral panic' about television. The argument that the viewing public can separate fantasy violence from reality needed to be restated.

Two of his commissioned contributors were from the left-leaning Glasgow Media Group, which over the years has highlighted Conservative bias in television.

But when the essay from group members David Miller and Greg Philo arrived, it did not support the general liberal belief that censorship of violence was unnecessary. Quite the reverse. It ridiculed the methods of those who said television had no power (the argument put forward by many of their fellow contributors), and said they may as well pretend that parents had no power to influence their children's behaviour.

The article was too much for the editor. In a letter sent to Glasgow at the beginning of May, Mr Barker said he would not publish the piece because it had arrived late and set completely the wrong tone. 'Your essay reads like a hostile review of the book in which it appears,' he wrote.

The Glasgow academics are furious. 'We've been censored,' said Mr Philo, who then tore into his 'complacent' colleagues.

'Liberals in cultural studies have allied themselves with the media corporations and the likes of Melvyn Bragg and Michael Winner,' he said. 'They seem to be saying that the fear about TV violence has been generated by the newspapers. But how can they believe that one medium, newspapers, can produce a moral panic while denying that another, television, can influence attitudes to violence?'

The two Glasgow writers say in their unpublished essay that academics do not want to discuss violence on television for fear that it would give comfort to moral reactionaries. 'Questions of television and violence have been ignored, played down and regarded with weary disdain,' they write.

But, they add, it is widely accepted that even sophisticated viewers can have their opinions shaped. Advertising relies on persuading people to buy a product. And studies of both TV news and fiction have shown how perceptions can be distorted.

After the 1984 miners' strike, a study of police and pickets found that not one person interviewed thought the picketing was mostly violent. But 54 per cent of TV viewers said they knew from the news that violence had dominated the picket lines.

TV soaps and films have also been shown to influence attitudes. The portrayal of the mentally ill as dangerous was found in one study to have influenced even people who had worked with patients and never experienced violence.

The authors do not claim to have found positive proof that violence on the screen causes violence on the streets, but they add that researchers cannot stick any longer to 'vague, negative assertions that there is no evidence'.

Mr Barker said that as editor he had every right to reject an article and denied he was ignoring evidence. 'People enjoy the media, they fanatasise about the media, but they understand the genre,' he said.