TV's higher threshold of pain

"Media violence is ... not real violence. Sometimes when people see that ... they can project themselves as good guys, and whoever they don't approve of or dislike as the bad guys. [TV] can serve as a venue for venting out their frustrations." In addition, the Federal Communications Commission and the networks' own censors seem no longer to provide restraints.

"Over the years, the [Fox] network got more and more lax about what they would allow on 'X-Files,' " says Frank Spotnitz, a producer for the hit sci-fi series and the coming CBS drama "Robbery Homicide Division." "Things you would have argued about for two hours in Season 2, there wasn't even a memo about in Season 9."

"Network television has changed," he says. "It's not about 'we want to show this, and the network won't let us.' ... The networks are more liberal about what they will let [producers] get away with."

Carol Mendelsohn, an executive producer of the new crime drama "CSI: Miami," agrees. "We push the envelope on 'CSI,' " she says. "We've never been held back by the network. But because it's about death, because its about forensics, because it's about murder, we have a lot of license."

Rather than only blaming the TV networks, some observers see larger issues at play. As long as society, including government, chooses violence to solve problems, TV shows will mimic that, argues the Rev. James Wall, a senior contributing editor of The Christian Century magazine, who writes about movies and TV from a religious and ethical perspective.

Violence in response to violence is "the way our government is moving [right now]," he says. "And so television takes the cue, and culture takes the cue...."

The basic problem of violence on television, he says, is that it "desensitizes us to the effects of violence and to the total inability of violence to solve our problems."

• M.S. Mason contributed to this report.

While the effects of graphic violence in entertainment TV on adults can be debated, the deleterious effects on children have been proven in numerous studies. Earlier this month, a study by the National Institute on Media and the Family concluded that children who watch violent TV are ruder and meaner than those who don't.

"What we found is that the kids who teachers and peers rated as the meanest were the ones who watched the most violent media," says David Walsh, founder and president of the institute.

"Children don't have real-life experience to check their media experiences against," says Jamsheed Akrami, associate professor of communications and mass media at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. "That's why we don't see too many adults flying out the window to imitate Spider-Man or Superman. But sometimes you've seen children do that."

With no letup in gory TV fare in sight, the results of a federally funded program at Oregon State University in Corvalis, released last week, offer some hope.

Results suggest children can learn to identify violence on TV and develop "TV literacy," becoming critical viewers.

Children learn to notice such things as when characters have been violent and are not being punished. Or when an animated character is shoved off a 20-story building and gets right back up with no ill effects.

"When you point that out to children, the light goes on and then they begin to critique TV events themselves," says Sharon Rosenkoetter, one of the principal investigators in the program, called "Project REViEW – Reducing Early Violence: Education Works."

After a year, third- and fourth-grade students who participated in the program were found to be watching fewer violent TV shows compared with a control group and with their own previous viewing habits.

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