Media accountability for real-life violence: A case of negligence or free speech?

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article by Dee was to provide a comprehensive review of U.S. Court decisions relating to cases in which a child or young adult was the victim of violence that was held to have been caused by mass media presentations to the public of material that induced violent acts which had fatal or serious health consequences for plaintiffs in a broad range of court cases. METHODOLOGY: This article was a non-experimental review of the literature. Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing to the present, there has been a periodic filing of suits against broadcasters, movie producers, rock musicians, game designers, and publishers for negligence specified in claims that children or adult plaintiffs (or parents of deceased children) had been killed or injured as a result of material instigated by a movie, an article, a recording, or a particular broadcast. In all, fifteen cases were summarized and each focused on an analysis of the legal arguments used in the case. The first six cases described situations wherein a party was harmed by a third party whose dangerous conduct was alleged to have been triggered by a media presentation. The subsequent nine cases analyzed cases where children or teenagers injured or killed themselves while acting out something they had purportedly read about, heard, seen on television, or played out during a game. The author provided legal definitions of negligence and incitement. Specifically, negligence was held to be "the failure to use such care as a reasonably prudent and careful person would use under similar circumstances." It was noted that tort law governs court decisions on negligence and defendants are negligent if their conduct posed, "unreasonable" risks to others, as determined by judges or juries. With regard to incitement however, there has been some ambiguity as it was not defined in the Constitution or any statute book. Incitement as a definition implied a significant probability of danger being intended by the perpetrator. The legal charge of incitement had roots in a series of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the First Amendment, and has come to be seen, along with libel, slander, perjury, obscenity, and fighting words, as an exception to First Amendment protections otherwise afforded as free speech and free press. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The overall review suggested that the courts hesitate to hold media organizations accountable for inciting the violent acts of specific individuals. Increases in the number of cases coming to the courts in the 1980s were considered by the author to be partly attributable to the development of common law through test cases as well as an increased turning of individuals to the courts for redress of grievances against the media. Especially noteworthy was that all test cases involved children or young adults. The author noted that cases of media-incited violence among adults have been difficult to prove in the aggregate, however children have provided a common grounds for rallying against social fears about the harmful effects of the media. For the future, the author concluded that a testing of media accountability may be part of a series of attempts to find direct and remediable solutions to the problems of increased violence in our society. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) KW - Literature Review KW - 1970s KW - 1980s KW - Media Coverage KW - Media Accountability KW - Media Violence Effects KW - Violence Causes KW - Victimization Causes KW - Case Studies KW - Criminal Justice System KW - Correctional Decision Making KW - Child Victim KW - Juvenile Victim KW - Adult Victim KW - Film Violence KW - Music Violence KW - Television Violence KW - Court Response KW - Justice System Response