It ignores the needs and tastes of people in all countries and foists violence on the children of the world. Greater freedom for creative people and more independent productions rather than more censorship can best reduce violence to its legitimate role and proportion, said Gerbner. He suggested that a grass-roots citizen organization, called the Cultural Environment Movement, work with broadcasters to that end. The new Television Violence Profile will go beyond tracking trends to explore the dynamics, causes and consequences of violent programming. In his review of its highlights, Gerbner also emphasized that violence is essentially a demonstration of power whose most pervasive effect is intimidation.
Media violence teaches who can get away with what against whom.
Its principal long-range consequence is the cultivation of the image of a mean world in which violence works, fear is rampant, and in which women and minorities are made to feel most vulnerable and dependent. Cultural Indicators is a database and an ongoing research project that relates recurrent features of the world of television to viewer conceptions of reality. Its cumulative computer archive contains observations on 2,816 programs and 34,882 characters coded according to many thematic, demographic and action categories. The study is directed by George Gerbner in collaboration with Michael Morgan at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Nancy Signorielli at the University of Delaware. It is supported, in part, by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, an agency of the U.S. Public Health Service, in its attempt to investigate prevention strategies relating to cultural sources of public health problems.