More than a generation As in the case of tobacco, the health hazards of violent television were recognized by experts and even by government agencies long before public awareness began to build. In 1968, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was created. The Impact of Televised Violence . Part of the reason that so little of this information has filtered into public awareness is that the media gatekeepers don t like to think about it. It is a problem whose only obvious solution, censorship, seems unthinkable.
Denial is easier.
One of the most dramatic and convincing demonstrations of the truth of the TV-violence connection came in this decade when a prediction made by Brandon Centerwall, then of the University of Washington, came true. Centerwall was aware that different parts of the world got television at different times. Therefore, he reasoned, TV s effects should show up at correspondingly different times. The United States was ahead of other countries. Our TV broadcasting got off the ground in the late 1940s.