Army Psychologist Fights for Peace: Asks Communities to Fight Media Violence

Army Psychologist Fights for Peace
Violence Researcher Asks Communities to Fight Media Violence at the Grass Roots Level

By Melissa Tyrrell, York Daily Record Staff -- As printed in the York Daily Record November 6, 2000

Media moguls won't promote David Grossman anytime soon.

So, the Army psychologist delivers his message the old-fashioned way.

Town, to town, he visits churches with an overhead projector and two hours of statistics as he tries to change the way Americans view movies, TV and video games.

Face to face, he recruits them in his grass-roots battle. He urges them to become peace warriors - to contest local store managers, to boycott violent material, to manage what their children see and hear and to fight for less violent choices available to other parents' children.

Grossman hit York County this weekend, delivering his message at three churches in Hanover, Shrewsbury and York Township.

His message: Media violence breeds real violence.

His proof: Years of Army kill training and the concurrence of the medical, psychological and law enforcement experts indicate that a select, few children are being trained to want to kill and know how to do it.

Grossman pointed to repeated studies from the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Surgeon General to back up his opinion that early and consistent messages of visual violence are affecting children nationwide.

"Violence is the most corrosive, toxic thing that can happen in a life," the director of the Warrior Science Group told his audience Sunday. "It's happening in wonderful, little communities of less than 50,000 people because nobody pops that festering bubble kids have and believe that violence is fun."

Grossman's argument was fivefold.

•American society reached its most violent point in the last decade. Critics who point to the declining murder rate fail to take into account the advancements of medicine and technology. When the aggravated assault rate is examined, violence has increased seven times since the 1950s.

•Violence is becoming a worldwide problem. He pointed to Canada's rate of aggravated assault, which has increased five times since 1964. He cited similar statistics that show violence at least doubling in Norway, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and the rest of Europe.

•Violence is breeding peripheral problems. Suicides are following. Families are living in more isolation. Fearful citizens are turning their life inside out to avoid violence. Grossman says if citizens are fearing for their lives, they'll agree to give up civil liberties and rights for security. This is the process by which societies crumble.

•Grossman believes no one truly knows what the battlefield is like - even those who have been through violence can't communicate its impact. But entertainment executives, like grandfathers telling legends, distort the reality of violence.

"About 25 percent of World War II vets admitted they wet their pants in combat," Grossman said. "You won't see that in the movies."

Grossman used his history with the U.S. Army to show that video games mimic the very methods used by the military to increase the kill rate in their ranks.

After World War II, a study found only 15 percent to 20 percent of soldiers would pull a trigger if left to their own devices. To increase that rate, officials trained infantrymen with human shaped targets that soldiers would fire upon as they appeared. By the Vietnam War, the kill rate had jumped to 99 percent.

A constant conditioning of stimulus and impulse reared soldiers to shoot impulsively and precisely at any human form that jumped in front of them.

The same conditioning happens with children nightly playing highly violent video games, which use ratings cloaked with the subtle allure of "mature" and "adult."

For example, in the 1997 shooting of a Paducah, Ky., prayer circle, a 14-year-old shot and killed all eight people gathered there - five in the head, three in the upper body.

Grossman reiterated the themes of his books, "On Killing" and "Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence."

He trains police, soldiers, teachers and counselors in understanding violence. Grossman also served as a consultant in scenes of the most violent crimes in recent history, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the Littleton, Colo., shootings, and other school yard violence including his hometown in Jonesboro, Ark.

At his speech in York Township's New Fairview Church of the Brethren, church members sat alongside local members of domestic violence and childcare consultants as well as a police chaplain.

He cited the AMA's findings that in areas where television was first available, the crime rate increased 15 years later. That trend consistently followed as cable television became more available.

He explained: Toddlers literally are impressionable. They can process what they see and feel as they watch a violent scene, but their immature, unformed brains still can't process logic. They don't discern what is fiction. Everything is real or magical. For generations of children, the impression of life was altered.

•Grossman's final point centered on media self-censorship. While executives fight not to censor out sex and violence, they have censored the established link between media violence and real violence.

"How many of you know the surgeon general said smoking causes cancer?" he asked the group, and many hands rose.

"How many of you know the surgeon general said media violence causes violence?" Most of the room sat still.

After the Columbine High School shootings, television reporters asked the surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher, to do a study on whether the two were linked.

He said it was already done - in 1972. The same point was proven again under C. Everett Koop.

Grossman restated Satcher's point: "We don't need more research, we need action."