For Immediate Release
For further information, contact:
Chris Finan, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (212) 587-4025

NEW YORK, N.Y., Feb. 6, 2001—The scientific studies that are used to support demands for government censorship of media violence are "poorly conceived, scientifically inadequate, biased and sloppy if not actually fraudulent," Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, charged in an interview published today on the Web site of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, www.abffe.com. ABFFE has also posted an article by Rhodes, "The Media Violence Myth," which is a detailed investigation of the media violence research. "There's no evidence that mock violence makes people violent, and there's some evidence that it makes them more peaceful," he concludes. An excerpt from "The Media Violence Myth" was published in Rolling Stone magazine in November. ABFFE is making the full article available for the first time. Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Making of the Atomic Bomb. His latest book is Why They Kill (Knopf, 1999), a study of scientific research into violence by American criminologist Dr. Lonnie Athens.

Rhodes is particularly critical of the work of Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann and Dr. Brandon Centerwall, two scientists whose studies are frequently cited by legislators and other advocates of restricting media violence. Huesmann, a University of Michigan professor of psychology, has "deliberately misrepresented his findings," Rhodes charges. Huesmann has claimed that there is a strong relationship between "early violence viewing and later criminality." Yet his conclusion is based on only three cases among 145 adult males who watched action television shows as children, Rhodes says.

"The Media Violence Myth" also challenges the work of Dr. Brandon Centerwall, a Seattle psychiatrist whose research was a mainstay of the Senate Judiciary Committee's 1999 report, "Children, Violence and the Media; A Report for Parents and Policy Makers." Centerwall claims that the introduction of television doubles the violent crime rate. Rhodes cites evidence showing that violent crime rates in Europe and Japan either stayed the same or declined in the years following the introduction of television there. Rhodes argues that Centerwall's theory is also contradicted by falling U.S. crimes rates despite continuing and even increased exposure to media.

ABFFE President Chris Finan said that those who advocate censoring media violence have tried to close the debate over the media violence research by claiming that a causal connection has been proved. A spokesman for the American Psychological Association has said that denying the connection between media and violence is like "defying gravity." "Many of these statements are made in an effort to silence opposition," Finan said. "Richard Rhodes has shown that there is good reason to be skeptical about this research. The debate is just beginning."

ABFFE will invite responses to "The Media Violence Myth" from Huesmann, Centerwall and other defenders of the media violence "hypothesis." Their comments will be posted on the ABFFE web site.