Violence and the Media - Is there a Connection?
by SSAA Research Team
Australian Shooters Journal
January 1998
Non-gun owners and gun prohibitionists do not have a monopoly on being repulsed by events like the mass murder at Port Arthur. Many firearm owners were enormously grieved over what occurred as well. Yet perhaps one of the most offensive aspects of the Port Arthur aftermath was the vilification and hate campaign directed at firearm owners.
Gun control groups and the media generally portrayed firearm owners as being an irresponsible group of macho slobs who were somehow complicitous in what had happened. Perhaps the media have got it wrong once again. Perhaps it is they themselves who may be implicated in contributing to events like Port Arthur.
The media's complicity in the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was diverted - by the media - to focus upon the limousine driver who was allegedly drunk and on drugs. The media dodges and weaves away from taking blame, and governments fail to make them accountable for fear of receiving poor treatment themselves. Individual politicians regard speaking against the media as political suicide. We, the public, must demand greater media restraint and accountability.
Jana Wendt says it all
Interviewer Jana Wendt
recently slammed media standards, saying that its worst elements were "no
better than the small-time conmen it often smites with phoney outrage. Principles
like objectivity and fairmindedness had been replaced by cheap opinion and
popular prejudices." (1)
Mainstream Australians are provided with few alternatives given the five-channel television monopoly combined with narrow newspaper ownership and perspectives. Wendt is correct when she says: "If democracy is worth our endorsement then its value must lie substantially in its respect for individual voices. To that extent the commercial media juggernaut is at odds with basic democratic principles." (2)
If we do not speak out for quality and condemn the mediocre, Wendt says, "we will have the country we deserve - resonating with manufactured opinions but devoid of knowledge, spouting fashionable jargon but incapable of plain speech. People fed on a diet of OJ Simpson and the Paxtons are hardly likely to become the thinkers of the new millennium." (3)
Pro-firearm perspectives continue to receive little, if any, objective publicity. As politically active firearm owners are aware, many newspapers still consistently fail to publish pro-firearm letters to editors, or pro-firearm articles. Occasionally, sport shooting events receive neutral coverage in the sports pages. The rest is of an irresponsible and often appalling type which shooters have come to expect.
An example
Consider Susan Kurosawa's
article which appeared in The Weekend Australian recently, entitled "Strife
in the fast lane - When driving away for the weekend, speak softly and carry
a cap gun." (4)
Reporting on 'road rage' on Californian freeways, Ms Kurosawa speaks of "mad drivers, shiny-eyed loony tunes" who "pull out a gun and shoot" at other drivers whom they feel have slighted them. Such events when they do occur are generally drug- and or alcohol-related, a phenomenon thankfully rare in Australia.
Converting the scenario to northern Sydney expressways, what is her solution? "You put your fist out the window and do an up-you-mate signal" and if that doesn't appeal, she says, "I don't mean to skite about my ingenuity, but a toy pistol aimed out the driver's side window has been known to work a treat." (5)
Is this responsible journalism? One can only assume it is supposed to be funny. Competition shooters facing the imminent confiscation of their handguns do not find it at all amusing.
Compare Ms Kurosawa's thoughts with an article which appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser the following day. "A teenager with a death wish used a toy gun to trick police into gunning him down in a bizarre suicide." After threatening police with the toy gun, the 19-year-old was shot dead. A note in his car said "Tell the police officers that I'm sorry, but I wanted to die." (6)
The media and handguns
Consider what the media is now
doing to handgun ownership. The view is constantly being developed in the
public's mind that handguns are inherently evil, are only used for harmful
purposes and ought to be totally banned. The fact that Australia has never
had a handgun problem to speak of does not seem to enter into the debate.
That handgun controls have been strict in this country for over a half a century
is never mentioned. Banning comes about because of impressions created by
the media, in the same way that nasty black semi-automatic rifles were banned
as somehow being more dangerous than any other type of firearm.
There is hardly a movie available today which does not have the involvement of some type of firearm used with bad effect against another human being. Consider recently popular films such as "Romeo and Juliet" (with almost a cult following amongst young people), "Kiss the Girls" and "Heavens Burning". Handguns feature prominently in all of their advertising promotions, not to mention the actual movies themselves. The abuse of handguns and firearms generally is endemic in contemporary movie production.
In the November 24th edition of Who weekly magazine, there are six photographs of firearms. Four are of handguns, two of which are being pointed at people. One is of a semi-automatic assault rifle, also being pointed at someone, and the other is of both pistols and assault rifles. (7) The images portrayed are both subtle and blatant, yet the overall effect upon the public is clear: firearms are only ever used for bad things and to hurt people. Ipso facto, private ownership of firearms is bad and only "the authorities" ought to have firearms to protect us from the criminal element. This is a very dangerous line of thinking for society to embark upon as it eventually transfers all power into the hands of those "authorities".
Handguns as portrayed in the media demonstrate two things. In the middle aged and elderly, they instil fear and a belief that handguns are inherently evil and must be banned. To the young and criminally minded, they demonstrate power and invoke a desire to have and use them, often illicitly. Nobody seems to have given it much thought, but the media's portrayal of handguns is now starting to mean that it could spell the end of private handgun ownership entirely. (See this month's Editorial.)
It is these graphic media images, subtly implanted in the minds of the public, which the government will be invoking in its ultimate attempt to finish off private firearm ownership in the community. Semi-auto rifles now, handguns next, hunting rifles after that; make no mistake.
The penny starts to drop
At last some people are starting to wake up to the great fraud that is being committed against Australians.
Dr Christopher Walker, in addressing an Australian College of Emergency Medicine
conference in Adelaide recently, said that the Government's gun law reform
program was "one of the greatest frauds perpetrated against the Australian
taxpayer" and noted that part of the problem is that Australians have "had
a continuous diet of media violence which was increasing their tolerance to
violent behaviour." (8)
The violence in America's culture is plain to see, yet Australia is importing that same culture through the media at an astonishing rate and volume. What has the net effect been in the US? America's over 22,000 firearm laws in various kinds of gun prohibition have been demonstrated not to work as they only disarm potential victims, making them more vulnerable to attack, while doing nothing to disarm those with criminal intent.
'Right-to-carry' self-defence firearm legislation has now been adopted by 32 American states. It is permissible to possess a handgun for self-defence in one's own home and in the car for self-defence against highway robbery and 'road rage' perpetrators. Crime rates in the home and on the highways have been shown to have dropped already.
It is horrifying that the problem has increased to such a degree in the US and nobody would want to see a similar one develop in Australia. But are Australians a part of all this by tacitly supporting it in their reading and viewing habits? It is time that we all started to speak out against what is happening in the media.
More AIC reports
In November, 1997, the Australian
Institute of Criminology released a report, Homicide in Australia 1989-96,
dealing with a range of aspects related to homicide.
The report lists key factors in homicides: "Homicide is most likely to be committed with a knife attack or by an assault", and, "Firearms account for just under one-quarter of all homicide deaths." (9)
The report notes in its profile of the typical offender that he is a male aged 18-26, has never married, is unemployed and a Caucasian. (10) The typical offender is not listed as being a firearm owner. The study also notes that "the majority of offenders are not working." (11) Clearly, being unmarried and unemployed has more to do with causing homicide than firearms have.
In the report's conclusion it is noted: Violence can become part of a lifestyle; it can become the basis for the resolution of difficult problems or situations.... Violence in some situations or in some subcultures may be considered a legitimate way of dealing with conflict. (12)
Furthermore: Children can acquire negative, aggressive and violent strategies of social interaction and relationship management through exposure learning and modelling. They can, by the same means, also acquire more constructive, non-violent strategies for behaving in social situations. (13)
Why then is our society promoting and, in effect, teaching violence through a variety of forms of media as the way to resolve problems?
It is a pity that once again, without justification and as in many other works, we see in the report's recommendations that calls are made for further firearm-related prohibitions, yet there is no mention about policy initiatives to deal with knives or assault.
Rising crime in Australia
Also in November, 1997,
Dr Lucy Sullivan's report Rising Crime in Australia was released. Dr Sullivan
notes that between 1964 and 1993, violent crime increased by 700% and rape
increased by 1400%. (14) She
lists amongst her key points the following:
* crime represents a failure of internal and external constraints to deter socially harmful behaviour;
* the family is a prime source of socialisation in the values that provide internal constraints against crime;
* female employment, which subtracts from the time mothers can give to socialisation, shows a statistical association with crime;
* divorce, which diminishes the time parents give to socialisation, shows a statistical association with crime;
* with a two decade time lapse, there is an important association between young motherhood and crime;
* there is a strong relationship between ex-nuptial birth and crime;
* there has been a parallel rise in sole parenting and crime;
* surveillance and punishment are external constraints and secondary methods of crime prevention. (15)
Nowhere in the report's key points is reference made to the presence of firearms being responsible for rising crime rates in Australia.
Could it be that the decline in social standards and values might have more to do with the rising crime rate than the presence of firearms?
Could it be that family and relationship breakdown and divorce might have more to do with homicide than the presence of firearms?
Could it be that movies, soap operas and the media generally might have more to do with declining social standards and values and relationship breakdown and divorce than does the presence of firearms?
Could it be that surveillance, punishment and more legislation are ineffective against crime, given the decay of values and standards in our society?
What is being done to address these issues?
Dr Sullivan notes: The 1980s marked the saturation of cinema and television screens with images and role models of violence, and with a constant diet of depersonalisation of its victims. (16)
Sullivan concludes that in the last thirty years, Australia has "shown an extreme decline as a nation of people with a strong respect for the personal well-being and property concerns of others." (17)
What does it mean?
The continuous onslaughts of media
images are subconsciously creating an impression in the minds of the general
public that guns, and handguns in particular, are meant for nothing but for
evil and to harm other innocent people like themselves. They are led to believe
that banning legal firearms will stop the illegal use of already illegal firearms.
This is of course utter nonsense, as demonstrated by the five prisoners who
shot their way out of a Brisbane jail in November, 1997, using now-banned
semi-automatic centrefire rifles.
Dr Sullivan concludes that our society ought to "bear in mind the possibility that media violence and pornography may be the major factor in the dramatic rise in violent crime over the last decade". (18)
The media machine rolls on relentlessly, grinding good values beneath it.
What sort of world is being created by visual and written images for our children? Apparently a very violent one. God help our children in twenty years' time.
All Australians, firearm owners or not, need to be part of the solution and not the problem. It is timely for Australians to review both their personal and their families' viewing habits and the types of computer games and toys with which our children are allowed to play. Are we contributing to our own malaise? We must start to become more discerning with regard to our own media intake. At the same time, film makers and the media generally have a responsibility to society to immediately cease portraying any form of violence as a way of life or as a solution to any of life's problems.
It is time that Australians of conscience started asking what we are allowing these media people to do to us and to our children. It has to stop.
Footnote:
As we go to
press the SSAA has just had representatives return from a Sydney conference
held by the Australian Institute of Criminology in conjunction with the Office
of Film and Literature Classification, entitled "Violence, Crime and the Entertainment
Media". A further report will follow.
1. Wendt, Jana, Andrew Olle Media Lecture 1997, 13 Nov, 1997, p3.
2. Wendt, p10.
3. Wendt, p11.
4. Weekend Australian, "Strife in the fast lane", 15-16 Nov, 1997.
5. Ibid.
6. The Adelaide Advertiser, "Teenager sets up shootout 'suicide'", 17 Nov, 1997.
7. Time Inc Magazine Company, Who weekly, 24 Nov, 1997.
8. The Adelaide Advertiser, "Gun reform fraudulent says doctor", 13 Nov, 1997.
9. James, Marianne; Carcach, Carlos, Homicide in Australia 1989-96 Australian
Institute of Criminology Research and Public Policy Series No.13, 1997, pxiii.
10. James & Carcach, p33.
11. James & Carcach, p42.
12. James & Carcach, p42.
13. James & Carcach, p43.
14. Sullivan, Lucy, Rising Crime in Australia Policy Monograph 39, The Centre
for Independent Studies, Sydney, 1997, pp8&15.
15. Sullivan, pviii-ix.
16. Sullivan, p55.
17. Sullivan, p56.
18. Sullivan, p56.
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