THE WHITE HOUSE
       
                     Office of the Press Secretary
       
       
                                                                    
       For Immediate Release                              March 4, 1994
       
       
                       REMARKS OF THE FIRST LADY
               VIA SATELLITE TO CHILDREN NOW CONFERENCE,
                             VIA SATELLITE
       
         Thank you all very much.  I want to thank Dr. Kennedy and
       Mr. Steyer, for helping organize this conference and for
       inviting me to be a part of it.
       
          It is an honor to speak to such this gathering that
       includes child advocates, academics, journalists, and
       educators, as Geoff already said.  I know that many of you
       have traveled across the country to participate in the panels
       over the next few days, and I want to thank you for your
       willingness to tackle a subject as complicated, controversial
       and important as children and the news media.  I'm only sorry
       I can't be there to join your discussions in person.
       
          As you know so well, we live in an age of great
       promise -- and great peril -- for our children.  While we
       have made considerable strides in improving the health,
       education, and job opportunities of our young people, our
       children continue to shoulder burdens never encountered by
       children in any other civilized society before this time.
       
          To be sure, our children today have advantages that
       even those of us my age didn't know:  things like computers
       and global information networks, in some ways a more united
       world, and the absence of Cold War tensions.  But they also
       have disadvantages -- disadvantages that inject cynicism,
       anxiety, and fear into their young lives.
       
          On the eve of the 21st century, American children
       are growing up in a world where competition for jobs is more
       intense than ever, where health care in our country is too
       costly, where college tuitions get higher and higher, and
       where poverty and neglect are increasing instead of
       decreasing.
       
          And now, adding to those burdens, comes a plague of
       violence, both in reality and through the perceptions that
       are promoted by the media, that is claiming, in realistic
       terms, far too many lives, but is also engendering a climate
       of fear because of what children see and hear every day.
       
          American children are immersed in a culture of
       violence.  They see violence on television.  They see
       violence in movie theaters.  They see it on the streets where
       they live.  They see it in their schools.  They see it in
       their homes.
       
          In too many neighborhoods, gunfire has become a
       daily ritual of life.  An Uzi has become a badge of honor.  A
       bullet wound has become an emblem of adulthood.  Just this
       last week, on Monday, I was across the country, in New York,
       where I visited a very large hospital in Brooklyn, a hospital
       that treats gunshot wounds and knife wounds every hour.
       
          And the doctors there told me that the most
       discouraging part of their work is that the age of the
       victims gets younger and younger, and that after they finish
       patching up a 13 or 14-year old from a gang shooting or a
       drive-by shooting, or a knife fight, they anticipate they
       will see that same young person in just a few months or years
       again.
       
          In Washington, our nation's capital, a young four-
       year-old girl was shot in the head when young men opened fire
       on an elementary school playground as a crowd watched a
       pickup football game.
       
          Last summer, again in Washington, gunshots rang out
       at a pool as children sought relief from 90-degree heat.  A
       young mother is dragged by the side of her car during a car
       jacking that had the child in the car and the mother being
       killed trying to hang on to the car.
       
          I could tell you many, many stories like that, but
       I think you know what happens every day in every
       neighborhood.  This horrible chronicle of malicious violence
       goes on and on, every day and every week, every month, across
       the nation.
       
          The reason we know about these tragic incidents --
       the murders, the car jackings, the kidnappings, the beatings,
       the rapes -- is because the news media reports about them. 
       And I'm sure that everyone in this audience today would agree
       that reporting about these sorts of incidents is part of the
       news media's job.
       
          I think we all agree that the public needs to know
       about crime and violence.  I'm sure that, to some degree,
       news coverage of crime has heightened public support for
       deterrents such as gun control.  And it might also help this
       Administration and this President get a crime bill with real
       possible hope for change this year.
       
          At the same time, we have to stop and ask ourselves
       some very important questions:
       
          First, has the exhaustive -- and perhaps
       excessive -- coverage of violence contributed to increasing
       alienation and dysfunctional behavior on the part of our
       children and youth?
       
          And second, does the news coverage engender so much
       cynicism and distrust among young people that they grow up
       with no faith in any of our institutions and little
       motivation to make something of their own lives?
       
          These are questions I hope you will explore and
       that I think we must answer.
       
          Over the past few years, a lot of attention has
       been paid to violence in movies and in television
       programming, and in the records that young people listen to. 
       And on that score, things are beginning to improve.  As the
       President said earlier this week, the entertainment industry
       has -- as a result of public concerns -- become much more
       involved in efforts to reduce violence in network
       programming.  Their willingness to set up a voluntary
       monitoring system is a step in the right direction.
       
          In the meantime, we're only now beginning to focus
       on the issue of violence and the news media, and it's a very
       tricky issue, given that information today comes from so many
       different sources -- newspapers, radio, local television,
       network television, television tabloids.  This is an issue
       that must be addressed, even as we recognize that these
       different news media sometimes go about their jobs in
       different ways.
       
          Just yesterday I read about the results of a new
       survey put out by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. 
       It showed that network news coverage of murder and violence
       had doubled last year -- even though the nation's overall
       crime rate had remained the same.
       
          Some of the coverage was a result of unusual cases,
       like the Branch Davidians, the World Trade Center bombing,
       the Menendez brothers' trial, the Polly Klass case, and the
       murders of tourists in Florida.
       
          But what about the rest?  Were the stories really
       newsworthy?  Or were they part of a troubling pattern of
       sensationalism that threatens to desensitize viewers --
       particularly children -- to the point where violence is
       considered a normal, accepted part of life?
       
          Children Now's recent survey reports that young
       people are deeply affected by news stories they read or see
       on television.  More than half the children surveyed said
       they felt angry or depressed after watching or reading the
       news.  And about 60 percent of kids between the ages of 11
       and 16 said the news too often conveyed negative images of
       young people.
       
          The fact is that we all want to stop violence.  We
       all want our children to experience their childhoods without
       being afraid, without being vulnerable, and without being
       insecure.
       
          We want them to be able to be children -- to feel
       safe in school, to enjoy sports and recreation, to develop
       extracurricular interests, and to build healthy
       relationships.
       
          But those kinds of positive childhood experiences
       seem less and less real to children who are routinely
       bombarded with words and pictures that seldom portray young
       people living that way.  Saturating children with
       increasingly graphic and sensational stories of violence
       prevents them from developing the emotional and psychological
       tools they need to deal with violence.
       
          One of the biggest dangers of excessive coverage of
       violence is that, in a child's eye, the stories validate,
       sometimes even glamorize, dysfunctional behavior.  Violence
       becomes normal -- and, in an odd way, even painless.  It
       becomes harder for a child to distinguish between fact and
       fiction.  The latest drive-by shooting on the evening news
       looks a lot like the Terminator blowing his fictional enemy
       to bits on the movie screen.
       
          The second danger of excessive coverage is that
       children become numbed -- or, as social scientists say,
       "desensitized" -- to violence.  Children become so habituated
       to seeing and hearing about violence that shootings,
       beatings -- even death -- come to seem normal to them.
       
          They develop an ironic detachment from life, a
       fatalism that prevents them from trusting anyone or anything. 
       Recently I read a story about young children planning their
       own funerals.  These children were so sure they were going to
       die violently that they had told their families what clothes
       they wanted to wear at their funerals, what music they wanted
       played, all with a casual detachment about what living and
       dying really means.
       
          The third danger of excessive coverage of violence
       is that it exacerbates stereotypes.  If African-American and
       Latino youth are usually portrayed on the news committing
       crimes, that stereotype is etched into the public
       consciousness.  The same is true for women, who are often
       portrayed as victims.
       
          Whether coverage of violence actually incites
       violent acts is one question we have to answer, and I know
       that researchers have debated it for years.  Another equally
       important question is whether such coverage leaves us -- and
       particularly children -- with the impression that no one in
       our society ever does anything good or anything right.
       
          For example, if children hear story after story
       about priests or clergy who molest children -- but never hear
       about those priests and clergy members who help children --
       they are not likely to grow up trusting their churches.  And
       yet, there are far more priests and ministers, and rabbis, in
       this country helping children than hurting them.
       
          We need to ask ourselves whether some of our news
       coverage contributes to this lack of trust and whether it
       perpetuates a cynical detachment which, in turn, leads to
       abnormal behavior, including violence.  Of course, I'm not
       suggesting that all news coverage of violence is bad or
       wrong, or that the media's treatment of violence alone
       accounts for our social ills.  As I said earlier, the public
       has to be kept informed, including children.
       
          But I think there must be balance.  Judgment must
       be exercised, and when it comes to children, prudence is
       certainly called for.
       
          In past generations, children got most of their
       information about the outside world from their parents, their
       teachers, their church, their local youth organization, from
       intermediary adults.  Today, children get most of their
       information from the media -- largely from television.
       
          And frankly, children can't cope with much of what
       they see.  Watching indiscriminate violence and sex does not
       strengthen a child's emotional, social or psychological
       development.  Watching a daytime talk show about bestiality
       is neither educational nor informative to a small child --
       nor, for that matter, I would argue, to an adult.
       
          I know that journalists need to treat their
       subjects as objectively as they can.  But I think that
       sometimes subjectivity, remembering what it's like to be a
       child, or be a parent raising children, is probably okay,
       too, as long as it's subjectivity grounded in values.
       
          After all, we all rely on our personal experiences
       and feelings -- as mothers and fathers, as brothers and
       sisters, as daughters and sons -- to inform our judgments as
       professionals.  And I think there are probably times when
       journalists should too, especially when it comes to children.
       
          We shouldn't have to wait for the next national
       survey -- some objective, quantitative analysis -- to become
       aware of the fear that children feel when they are
       chronically exposed to violence on television, at the movie
       theater, or in their newspapers.  Think about it.  When you
       or I see violent images or read about violent acts taking
       place around us, we get scared.  We get anxious.  And we're
       supposedly adults.  We could even put these events in
       context.  Children, particularly small children, cannot.
       
          When violence is newsworthy enough to be reported,
       it should be balanced with stories that provide children with
       positive images of themselves and those around them,
       particularly adults in authority.  Journalists should work
       extremely hard to avoid exacerbating negative stereotypes. 
       And they should work extremely hard not to contribute to what
       social scientists call the "mean world syndrome," where
       children become so self-critical that they take on the
       attributes of the negative world they see portrayed in the
       media.
       
          After all, good judgment and caution, or prudence,
       do not violate the journalist's First Amendment rights.  They
       do not deny the public their right to know.  But good
       judgment and caution, and prudence do and can make a
       difference to children.
       
          This is a debate that is long overdue.  And perhaps
       we are having it now, in our country, because we are
       recognizing the unintended consequences of the explosion of
       information, the competition among news media outlets to try
       to get there first and be sensational enough to keep the
       audience looking.
       
          We know that as we drive down a road where there is
       an accident, we can't help but turn our head and watch, and
       perhaps say to ourselves, thank goodness we're not among
       them.  But a steady diet, every day, of that kind of
       sensational violence is not how any of us were raised or live
       our lives on a day-to-day basis.
       
          And what we have to try to do is to create the sort
       of balance that we know is difficult but imperative if we
       expect our children to be given a fair shot at a childhood
       that allows them to develop emotionally and psychologically
       into adults that can be productive and deal with the world in
       all of its good and bad, in a constructive way.
       
          Thank you all very much.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Mrs. Clinton, you've been kind
       enough to agree to stay for a while in the conversation, and
       I know you're used to cream-puff questions from journalists. 
       We have five very positive role models here of young students
       who, in fact -- some of them are journalists -- who want to
       engage in a dialog with you, as well as asking some
       questions.
       
          What I want -- I think you have some brief bios on
       them, but I'd like them each to introduce themselves and then
       to have them ask you a question or make an observation that
       might be helpful.
       
          Luis, perhaps you could start.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  You want me to ask to ask the
       questions?
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  I want you to tell who you are. 
       Introduce yourselves, and then we'll come back with
       questions.
       
          MR. CRUZ:  Okay.  Hi.  My name is Luis Cruz, and
       I'm 18 years old.  I'm a freshman at the University of
       California, Berkeley, and I'm a reporter for Straight Talking
       Teens.  You might have heard of us from Mrs. Gore, who was
       there, and so I just want to offer you an open invitation any
       time you're in town.  
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Thank you.
       
          MS. BROWN:  Hi.  My name is Shawntee Brown I'm 10
       years old.  
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Great.
       
          MS. BEHR:  Hi.  My name is Madeleine Behr
       (phonetic).  I'm 11 years old.  I go to Wood School in
       Alameda, and I'm a reporter at Children's Express.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Great.
       
          MS. STRASSBERG:  Hi.  My name is Suzanne Strassberg
       (phonetic).  I am 12 years old, and I attend the seventh
       grade at California Junior High School, and I have won
       several Young Authors awards.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Good for you.
       
          MS. CHANG:  Hello.  My name is Lydia Chang
       (phonetic).  I'm the student body president of Leland
       (phonetic) High School.  I'm also the California State Junior
       Miss.  I'll be representing California in the America's
       Junior Miss competition, and I am a correspondent for CNN's
       Real News for Kids.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Good.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Lydia, why don't you start with the
       first --
       
          MS. CHANG:  Okay.  Mrs. Clinton, your talks about
       cynicism, how seeing all this violence in the news presents
       stereotypes, negative stereotypes of a lot of people in
       society, not just young people -- I'm concerned that because
       these images are being presented, and they're at least
       distorted if not inaccurate images, that adults watching the
       news are also garnering images that are false of young
       people.
       
          And I'm really concerned about people on Capitol
       Hill -- legislators, Mr. President, yourself, who are all
       policy makers -- and if you get these images and your
       opinions from watching the news, then perhaps they're
       inaccurate.  And so I'm just wondering, where do you get your
       information about young people?  Do you get them from the
       news?  Do you think -- does it ever occur to you that some of
       those portrayals might be inaccurate?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Well, one thing that I can tell you
       is that my husband and I never watch the news.  We consider
       that part of our mental health routine, and so we don't get
       our images about you or anybody from watching the news.  We
       do it from actually interacting with people.
       
          And my husband likes to spend lots of time with
       young people.  We have many groups of young people coming
       into the White House.  He goes out and visits young people in
       schools and other settings, and I do the same as often as
       possible.  I really like to look at people face to face.  I
       like to hear from them, like I'm hearing from you, because  I
       think that your point is well taken.
       
          There is a lot of fear among adults about children,
       particularly teenagers, because of the constant images of
       teenagers being threatening, particularly young men,
       particularly young black and Hispanic men.  And I think that
       it does present a distorted view and makes it very difficult
       for individuals to be treated fairly and given the chance to
       be whom they are trying to be.
       
          So it is important that you and other young people
       really keep insisting that you be seen as who you are and not
       filtered through some media image that stereotypes you along
       with other young people.  And we'll do our part the best we
       can, in Washington, to try to make it clear that most
       American children and teenagers are good kids.  They are
       working as hard as they can in school or on the job.  They
       are responsible, they don't get in trouble, and they deserve
       to be treated with respect by the rest of us.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Suzanne?
       
          MS. STRASSBERG:  Okay.  Well, my school is sort of
       in an upper class neighborhood, and there was a random
       shooting that occurred just recently, and -- sorry -- and it
       was covered on every news station in Sacramento.  But I've
       noticed that if something like a random shooting happened in
       a sort of poor neighborhood, it's just counted as an everyday
       thing, like it happens every day.  And what can we do to help
       people realize that shootings are an everyday thing
       everywhere?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Well, I think that part of what we
       have to do is recognize that violence is no respecter of
       anybody, anymore.  You find it throughout our country, in
       rural areas as well as city areas.
       
          And one of the things that the President has tried
       to do in this crime bill that I mentioned in my remarks, is
       to put more police on the streets, to try to come up with
       alternative punishments, to try to get guns out of the hands
       of criminals -- not just the Brady Bill, which actually went
       into effect this week, but try to ban some of the assault
       weapons and other things that kids get a hold of and use
       against one another.  So there is at least some willingness
       now to recognize the problem.
       
          It's not just somebody else's problem.  It affects
       all of us.  And so I think that once we are willing to say
       that, then we've got a chance to fix it.  As long as it was
       somebody else's problem, you know, it only happened to a
       certain kind of people who lived in certain kinds of
       neighborhoods -- unfortunately there were too many Americans
       who were willing to ignore or deny what was happening.
       
          Now, finally, we've got a President -- and I hope a
       majority of congress and the majority of the country -- who
       want to try to help everybody stop this epidemic of violence.
       
          MS. BEHR:  The media often covers stuff about
       adults without health coverage, but not usually do you hear
       stuff about homeless kids without education or health care. 
       Do you think this is right?  And what can we do to bring the
       subject up to the public?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Let me make sure I heard you:  what
       can we do to make sure that people know more about homeless
       kids -- who are homeless and without education?
       
          MS. BEHR:  About how that affects the need for
       health care -- health coverage, too.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Right.  Well, that's one of the
       things we're trying to do with health care reform, is to make
       sure that every American and every child gets health
       coverage.  Right now, you're right, that too many children
       don't have health insurance, either because their parents
       don't work for somebody who helps provide health care, or
       because they're not poor enough to qualify for government
       health care, or because they just get lost in the system,
       like some of the homeless children in shelters that I have
       visited or seen on the streets.
       
          Under what the President is proposing, health care
       will be available to every American.  It will no longer
       matter whether you work, or where you work, or if you've been
       sick.  Everybody will get health care.  That's particularly
       important for children, especially children like the ones you
       care about, who are in terrible situations right now without
       health care, and they deserve to have the same kind of health
       care I try to give to my daughter.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Were you asking the question, too,
       Madeleine, if there was more coverage -- about children and
       the problems that they have with health care -- would that
       help to affect the public debate on health care?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Oh, I think it would.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  And how much of the coverage seems
       to -- of course, you don't watch the news, so you may not be
       a good witness on this.  (Laughter.)
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  People tell me about it, though.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  How much of the coverage has
       focused on children and their need for health care?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Well, you know, it's -- this is
       slightly, I guess, off the subject, but I think it's related
       in that part of what we need is a consistent discussion about
       important issues like violence or like health care.  And too
       often the news media thinks if they've done it once, then
       they've done it, and they've got to move on to something
       else, and particularly with the debate over health care.
       
          Most Americans are only now beginning to focus on
       health care, so they need constant information.  And it may
       be boring to people who follow this closely or watch the news
       every night, but for most of the rest of us Americans, we
       want to see something covered over and over again, so we
       really do get information.
       
          And her point about covering what happens to
       children, particularly children who are falling between the
       cracks, that are not getting health care, is something that I
       think we should have a lot of coverage about, because we are
       paying a very high price in both money terms and human terms
       because we don't take care of our children and give them
       decent health care.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Shontee, I know that much of what
       the First Lady said in her opening remarks about violence on
       television is part of what has concerned you.  Do you want to
       maybe talk a little about your own feelings as well as asking
       her a question about it.
       
          MS. BROWN:  Okay.  The way that I feel about
       violence, that kids -- kids of color is being portrayed by
       the media because if -- because if you go to (inaudible) to
       shoot -- to shoot up somebody, they won't -- they won't put
       that on the news.  They'll put a white kid going on a rampage
       (inaudible) just shooting everybody.  I think they -- the
       media -- is just judging on whites instead of blacks.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  You know I think that the concerns
       that you express are ones that I really share with you, 
       because we've got to get, in our country, to a point where we
       see individuals as individuals, not as members of groups.  If
       someone does something wrong, that individual should be
       punished, and that individual should be held accountable.
       
          But whether a person is black or white, that
       doesn't make any comment on everybody else who is black or
       white.  We ought to just look at the individual behavior and
       try as hard as we can to eliminate, you know, racial and
       ethnic, and other kinds of stereotypes.  And the news media
       needs to help us do that as best it can, because it has such
       influence over how people see the world.  And I think you're
       right to be concerned.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Luis?
       
          MR. CRUZ:  Mrs. Clinton, I've noticed that there
       aren't too many good stories in the media about public
       education.  How do you feel about that, and how do you feel
       about the fact that you seem to contribute to this perception
       by sending your kid to -- your daughter to a private school?
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  Well, I think that's a fair
       question, because all during the time that we lived in
       Arkansas, when my husband was the governor there, Chelsea
       always attended public school.  And we worked very hard and
       believed very strongly in public school.  And if her father
       were still the governor of Arkansas, or were not the
       President of the United States, she would still be in public
       school.
       
          But we have, unfortunately, some special
       considerations having to do with security and some other
       things, that I wish we didn't have.  I mean, I wish that we
       could still live like former presidents lived, who could walk
       out their front door and go for a walk, who didn't have to be
       surrounded by secret service people all the time, who didn't
       have to have their daughter surrounded by secret service.
       
          But the world we're living in doesn't permit us to
       do that.  So we had to make a decision based as parents
       because of her father's position.  But I don't think you'll
       find any two people more committed to public education than
       we are, because it works.  Again, here is an unfair
       characterization.
       
          Most public education works for most kids.  It
       doesn't work for every student, and we need to do better. 
       But it is unfair to dismiss public education the way too many
       people do, when it is working.  And you are a result, other
       people are a result of good public schools, and I think we
       ought to celebrate the successes.
       
          We try to do something most other countries don't
       try to do, to educate all of our kids, no matter what
       language they speak, no matter what background they come
       from.  And we ought to be proud of that.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  If you have a couple of more
       minutes, I'd love to follow up with the students' feelings
       about some of the points you raised in your comments and
       maybe give you a chance to ask a question or two of them, if
       you'd like to.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  They're telling, me, Geoff, that
       I've got about three or four more minutes, so I'd be glad to.
       
          A PARTICIPANT:  Okay.  Madeleine, you told a story
       this morning about your father and television news, that I
       think might be interesting for the First Lady to hear.
       
          MS. BEHR:  Well, at my household my parents
       sometimes watch the news.  We don't -- we don't watch it,
       like, daily, every night, but my dad usually doesn't like me
       watching the news because he knows that almost 100 of the
       things on it is violence, and he doesn't want me to go to
       sleep with bad nightmares, that I'm going to be kidnapped
       right out of my household or something like that.  So he
       doesn't -- he doesn't really like me watching the news.
       
          MRS. CLINTON:  I can understand that.  You know,
       one of the things that the news media cannot really deal with
       is the range of its audience -- who turns on the TV, who sits
       in front of it.  But it is very clear to anyone who has
       studied it that children of a certain age and below take very
       literally what they see on the news.  And there are just
       countless stories of children becoming very anxious and
       concerned about what they see, and thinking it was going to
       happen to them.
       
          And it used to be possible, in previous times, and
       certainly before television was as pervasive as it is, to
       protect children of a certain age from that kind of
       information.  You know, children -- when you're growing up,
       you have a lot of work to do.  I mean, you know, babies have
       to learn to walk and talk, and then you've got to learn about
       how you write and you read, and you've got to figure out how
       the world works around you, like how you relate to the people
       in your family and everything.
       
          I mean, I think a lot of adults forget what hard
       work it is to be growing up and to deal with the problems any
       child has to deal with.  If you add on top of that a steady
       diet of violence that makes children feel frightened and
       scared, and anxious, it makes it more difficult for them to
       deal with what they have to do just as a daily part of
       growing up.  Then you are interfering with what is or should
       be a kind of positive development in children's lives.
       
          So I think your father and mother make a very good
       decision to try to at least act like the adults in your life,
       and protect you from being unnecessarily exposed to stuff
       that you can do nothing about, and that which only can make
       you anxious and block out your doing other things you should
       be doing and thinking about.  So that's one of the problems
       we've got.
       
          I mean, how do we let children be children, and
       grow up to be able to cope with all these things?  If you get
       a steady diet of it too soon, it's like eating too much of
       anything.  You get indigestion, and it interferes with your
       being able to deal with other problems.  And I think that's
       happening with too many of our children.
       
       
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