The themes and plots turn up everywhere. Violence, as presented on primetime television, is at least ten times more likely than in the real world. Television producers also provide a vision of who is most likely to be a victim of violence with their character choices-not surprisingly, they choose women, children, old people, and people of color. Its Effects Television's distortion of the role of violence provokes distorted social beliefs, Gerbner and associates found. Broadcast news' emphasis on individual rather than social violence, for instance, promotes the belief that violence is committed by individuals who need to be restrained, and deflects attention away from the more profound violence administered legitimately by the state.
Fictional programs support and expand the paradigms of violence promoted by broadcast news coverage.
They explain who gets hurt the most. Although in the real world, women, children, old people, and people of color may be more likely to be victims than white men, the extent of the differential is exaggerated on television. People who see others from their own racial, age, or gender group repeatedly victimized on television are instilled with a greater sense of fear and insecurity than those who identify with characters less frequently victimized, they found. The violence presented on television rarely includes portrayals of pain, suffering, or rehabilitation-it is mostly symbolic, not realistic. They are more likely to support wars, repression, military spending, and almost anything else done in the name of personal or national security.