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Fall 2007 Bulletin
2007 Silha Lecture Focuses on Media Violence Regulation
Attempts to legislate violence on television and video games are likely to continue, even though “the kids are all right,” according to the 2007 Silha Lecturer.
Attorney Robert Corn-Revere delivered the 22nd Annual Silha Lecture, titled “The Kids are All Right: Violent Media, Free Expression, and the Drive to Regulate,” to an overflow audience at the University of Minnesota’s Cowles Auditorium on Oct. 1, 2007. A partner with Davis Wright Tremaine in Washington D.C., Corn-Revere has been actively engaged in major media regulatory proceedings since the late 1990s, most recently serving as lead counsel for CBS in CBS Corporation, v. Federal Communications Commission (06-3575), the Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” case, which he argued before the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 11, 2007.
According to Corn-Revere, events such as the grisly mass murder-suicides at Columbine High School in 1999 and Virginia Tech University on April 19, 2007 have led commentators and legislators to blame violent media for youthful rage.
Corn-Revere said that although lobbying groups and legislators have tried in recent years to mandate regulatory regimes for violent content in video games, movies, and music, courts have struck down every such attempt. Most often, Corn-Revere said, legislators have tried to extend the narrow traditionally accepted categories of unprotected speech, such as obscenity, to encompass violent content. State and federal courts have resisted these strategies, however, saying violent media deserve as much First Amendment protection as other forms of literature or entertainment, and citing the practical problem of determining which violent media should be protected and which should not.
Most recently, on Sept. 17, 2007, U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron (W.D. Okla.) permanently enjoined the enforcement of an Oklahoma law that would have banned the sale of violent video games to minors. The judge said that the law unconstitutionally infringed on the First Amendment rights of game producers and retailers. “There is a complete dearth of legislative findings, scientific studies or other rationale to support passage of the act,” wrote Judge Cauthron.
Corn-Revere said that similar laws have been struck down on the same basis by courts in Indiana, Missouri, Washington, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Louisiana.
Such consistency in the courts notwithstanding, Corn-Revere said, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a report in April 2007 that said that Congress can and should act to limit how much violence children are exposed to on television.
Corn-Revere was critical of the FCC report, which made no direct recommendations addressing the problems of defining excessively violent content, saying instead, “Congress could do so.” Corn-Revere called this “purely a ‘let Mikey try it’ kind of approach to policy.”
One possible solution the FCC proposed was “time-channeling,” creating a safe-harbor period where violent broadcast television would be prohibited. Corn-Revere compared “time-channeling” to the “Maginot line,” a concept that “has become synonymous with a comically ineffective solution to a problem.” Corn-Revere said that modern technology such as cable and satellite television, the Internet, personal video players, and digital video recording (DVR) devices, media which enjoy fuller First Amendment protection than does broadcast television, have made a scheduling-based solution “irrelevant.”
However, Corn-Revere said, “technology … has also made protections available that simply didn’t exist when the Supreme Court first considered the issue [of broadcast indecency regulation] in Pacifica in 1978.” Corn-Revere said that DVRs and most televisions today make it possible for parents to actively monitor the programming their children are exposed to and can even block access to some programs and channels they find too violent.
Corn-Revere also said that the social science research upon which anti-media violence legislation has been based is “often mis-described and mis-cited.” Courts that have closely examined the social science basis for protecting the interests of children have not found it as compelling as the legislators who have passed the laws, Corn-Revere said.
Moreover, Corn-Revere said, social measures focused on youth show that things are actually “tending to get better for people in that age group.” He cited decreasing rates of drug and alcohol abuse among children, decreasing juvenile crime rates, lower youth suicide rates, and fewer fights in high schools.
The Silha Lecture is supported by a generous endowment from the late Otto Silha and his wife, Helen.
- Patrick File, Silha Fellow and Bulletin Editor
University of Minnesota | College of Liberal Arts | School of Journalism and Mass Communication
