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The First Amendment, as interpreted at the time, protects TV networks from responsibility unless act is intentional involved, so "incite the case was thrown out of court. And the argument goes on. Psychological and medical research teams have joined parents and educators in studying the problem, much of their work financed by organizations publicly concerned about the damage TV may be doing. Among the latter: the National Institute of Mental Health, the House Subcommittee on Communications. Even the American Medical Association, not noticeably alarmist, announced a series of research projects and dedicated itself to a long-term effort to reduce the amount of violence on TV.
Violence on TV, despite protests, does not seem to be declining. Last month Professors George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications came out with their tenth annual Violence Profile. On the basis of a prime-time and a weekend sampling, they report that crooks still make up 17% of all television characters (vs. 1% or less in real life), and that 65% of them are involved in violence. The damage, Gross argues, does not lie in rare incitements to acts of violence, but in the attitudes and views of the world engendered by what they call "heavy" TV watching. In-depth testing of a sample of 600 proved heavy viewers are more fearful, anxious and suspicious of the world than "light" viewers. Significantly more of them replied "almost always" when asked, "How often is it all right to hit someone if you're mad at them?" As to reading, Gross says, "except occasionally for the lowest IQ group who do a little better if they watch TV —because they see some printed words at least—for most children the more television the worse they do in school."
Other studies seem to support Gross's finding. Leonard Eron, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, conducted a ten-year investigation, ending in 1970, on 875 third-grade children in a semirural part of New York State. Eron started with the conviction that the impact of television on people was no greater than that of movies, fairy tales or comic strips. He now believes that a "direct, positive relation" exists between TV viewing by small boys and aggressive behavior. Little girls, significantly, did not show any increase in such aggressive behavior. But a new project Eron has since begun indicates that they do now. His explanation: today TV has more violent female role models—including those in Wonder Woman and Charlie's Angels—than it had before.
Another study linking TV watching with aggression was funded by CBS. In 1972 the network commissioned William Belson, a sociologist at the London School of Economies' Survey Research Center, to run a six-year, $290,000 study of 1,565 London teen-age boys. Belson's conclusion: long exposure to television noticeably increased the degree to which they engaged in serious acts of violence (smashing cars and phone booths, setting shopping bags on fire).