violence in media

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/business/media/07violence.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1199854800&en=5e6fce5806453176&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Damn NY Times links are long to type out.

Anyway, it's rather funny to see a major news outlet reporting that violence in media actually reduces real life violence. Twice in the last couple of weeks has NY Times run stories running against the grain. Weird. They fire an editor that I didn't hear about? I don't quite think it's necessarily the violent gory movies that are toning down the violent offenders. I recall seeing that during baseball's heyday, a city with a winning team in it could expect a big drop off in crime while the team was playing in town. I think it's more that people have something to do instead of go commit an assault or attempt theft or other mayhem.

Best two lines: "compared to what?" and "It's not as if these people watching violent movies would otherwise be home reading a book". It would seem to me that there is and has been a significant portion of the population that either through general lack of self-control, or lack of said control brought on through imbibing alcohol or other drugs is inherently prone to violent activity. Compared to this, sitting in a movie theatre munching on popcorn while a young woman is mutilated on screen is probably a considerable improvement.

Another point: Critics already arguing that this type of study argues that letting kids watch violent movies is fine, (least bad?). I'm fairly certain this is not what the study says. I think what it says is that a population of people already prone to violent activities is less violent when they're taken to see a violent movie. It doesn't at all suggest that we should let violent media babysit children. In other words, pass the quiet creepy guy a book, but give the prankish jock a copy of Doom so he doesn't do anymore damage with his weekends. Playing Doom drunk isn't going to harm anything real. Vandalizing neighborhoods will.