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

NEW YORK, N.Y., March 1, 2001—

Author Richard Rhodes today rejected criticism of his article, "The Media Violence Myth," made by two leading media violence researchers, University of Michigan psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron. "Their data don't prove much of anything except the old truism that aggressive children tend to grow up to be aggressive adults–whether they watch mock violence on television or pick daisies," Rhodes said. The article, the criticism by Huesmann and Eron and Rhodes' reply have been published on the ABFFE Web site, www.abffe.com.

Huesmann and Eron accused Rhodes of ignoring the fact that 80 per cent of the researchers in the area of media violence agree that watching violent images is harmful and is responsible for as much as 10 per cent of the violent crime committed in the United States. They also cite a survey of more than 200 studies of media violence that "consistently show a strong effect for media violence on aggressive behavior."

In his reply, Rhodes said that a similar survey by Dr. Jonathan Freedman, a University of Toronto psychologist, came to the opposite conclusion. Rhodes quotes Freedman's testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Youth Violence last year. "The available studies provide no convincing evidence that viewing violence on television or in the movies causes aggression or crime and quite a bit of evidence that it does not," Freedman said.

Rhodes also refused to retract his charge that Huesmann misrepresented the results of his research in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Huesmann testified that "there was a strong relation between early violence viewing and later adult criminality" without explaining that his conclusion was based on three boys who committed violent crimes as adults, Rhodes said. In their reply, Huesmann and Eron said they urged people to treat their results with caution until they were confirmed and that they were supported by later studies. "If, as they say, they ‘never hid the exact results,' they certainly hid the fact that the results were based on only three boys out of 145," Rhodes said.

ABFFE President Chris Finan said that he hopes the debate over "The Media Violence Myth" will promote an understanding of the media violence research, which many politicians and others cite as justification for censorship. Anyone who would like to submit comments can e-mail them to chris@abffe.com; mail them to ABFFE, 139 Fulton St., Suite 302, New York, NY 10038, or fax them to (212) 587-2436.