View source for When violent TV is just child's play

{{article
| publication = Daily Express
| file = 1971-12-30 Daily Express.jpg
| px = 200
| height = 
| width = 
| date = 1971-12-30
| author = James Thomas
| pages = 6
| language = English 
| type = 
| description = 
| categories = 
| moreTitles = 
| morePublications = 
| moreDates = 
| text = 
HOW MANY murders, how much bloodshed will your child see on television in the next seven days?

In America TV killings are estimated at more than 20 a day. Is British television creeping towards this appalling figure?

Is violence being built up by seemingly harmless programmes which have overstepped the mark?

Questions like these-big questions are being tackled this week in Plymouth at the conference of the Assistant Masters' Association.

Both B.B.C. and ITV. backed by psychologists and a team of research workers who have already run up a bill of more than £250.000, have tried to establish the exact impact of TV on young people-and failed to come up with a real answer.

CONCERN

But there is certainly a growing tide of concern, reflected in the Plymouth debate. Reflected too inside my own family.

I have seen my small daughter run away from scenes even in "Dr. Who" - a programme meant for children.

Yet day by day the men who "censor" TV sit in their darkened private cinemas aware, obviously, of the laws which govern TV. But letting laxity creep in slowly.

Scenes and language which would have been cut a few short years ago are now passed without protest. Teachers at last join parents in protest and. since they have the collective voice which parents do not have. they will be heard.

They claim that programmes like "Please, Sir!" and "The Fenn Street Gang" affect school discipline, that children are tending to admire and copy the rude, unruly antics of their TV equivalents who always seem to get away with it. The extent to which programmes like these influence behaviour has proved difficult to assess. But certainly "Please, Sir!" in its original form perhaps the best comedy series London Weekend has produced, had at firs an air of sympathy and humanity which has now disappeared in favour of little but unamusing rowdyness.

COMMON 

The most disturbing issue facing researchers is one I have time and again noticed for myself-the fact that violence has become so commonplace on TV that children no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. 

Dr. Ian Haldane, resident psychologist with the Independent Television Authority, told me "Potential delinquents are not very critical viewers. They take real death Vietnam with exactly same attitude as a shooting in a Western." 

Now it seems likely that the teachers will be hear and that the whole prolem will be re-examined both B.B.C. and ITV. The fact must be faced that very often - too often - it is a child's hand which selects the family viewer until quite late in the evening. Untimely death and disobedience do not help bring up a well-balanced child.


Caption: PETER CLEALL First of "Please Sir's" unruly rebels. Is his TV behaviour habit-forming?

}}