Top Thinker On TV’s Impact To Speak Pioneer Researcher George Gerbner To Lead Gu Conference

Is the world getting meaner?

It might seem so - depending on how much television you watch.

“Mean world syndrome” occurs when people see the real world as the same one viewed on TV. A place where three people are murdered nightly and a woman can’t walk to a car alone.

Such images can make viewers anxious, distrustful and easily controlled by fears, according to George Gerbner, the pioneer researcher who documented the syndrome.

Now activists are hoping Gerbner will spur Spokane viewers to do something about television.

In a cultural conference Saturday designed to move awareness up “mega-notches,” Gerbner will lead a workshop on how television works and what viewers can do about it.

“We need to mobilize the community … and this is the launching pad,” said John Caputo, chair of the Communication Arts Department at Gonzaga University.

Described by Newsweek as perhaps the nation’s leading authority on the social impact of television, Gerbner’s 30 years of research have turned him into a sharp critic and international watchdog.

“It’s within our power as individuals and families to immunize against what we are seeing. This is what the media literacy movement is,” says Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on television violence and dean emeritus of the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Saturday, he and faculty from Gonzaga University, the University of Washington, volunteers, media and community center leaders will hold “Telling All the Stories” at Gonzaga.

For centuries, children have learned about life from stories told by parents, teachers, churches and schools. Now, television tells the stories. Specifically, a small number of international media conglomerates that produce and sell a product.

TimeWarner, MCA, Disney and Rupert Murdoch control 85 percent of what television and movie viewers see, Gerbner says.

What does the view look like?

Violent - but not by viewer choice. Gerbner says it is a myth that the public wants violence. Season after season the highest-rated Nielsen programs are nonviolent.

So why do 75 percent of prime time programs show overt violence? Because violence is active and cheap to produce, the researcher says.

Since most television and film producers cannot break even on the domestic market, a full 50 percent of all U.S. media earnings come from syndicating shows abroad.

While humor is culture-bound, “violence travels well,” he says. “It needs no translation.”

It is, after all, the lifeblood of sequels. Gerbner notes that in “The Godfather,” a film he loved, there were 12 corpses. By “Godfather III,” there were 53. “Deathwish” had nine corpses. “Deathwish III” had 52.

Gerbner says television trains viewers about social relationships: who can get away with what against whom.

“It shows one’s place in the societal pecking order.”

At the top of that order are men. They outnumber women 3 to 1 on television, and half of all characters are white middle-class males in their prime.

Older people, the disabled and children are under-represented and over-victimized. Blacks and Hispanics are killed or beaten more than their white counterparts, according to his studies.

Such representations train minorities to see their opportunities as limited, to feel alienated and more vulnerable.

“Minorities are not born, they are created by cultural conditioning,” he says.

For people who believe they’re exempt from the influence of violence on television, Gerbner notes that “The fish in the ocean doesn’t know it’s swimming in salt water.”

Americans grow up with an average of 7 hours and 41 minutes a day of television, witnessing five violent acts per hour, Gerbner says.

Happy violence - which he defines as “swift, painless, thrilling and with a happy ending” - oozes from cartoons to movies like “Home Alone” and “Last Action Hero.”

Eventually, people lose the ability to empathize or protest. Eventually, they expect violence.

That expectation prompts television news stations and newspapers to lead with reports of violence although the actual crime rate has been steady or decreasing, he says.

“In many ways, it exploits the expectation of violence and confirms your worst fears.”

Gerbner’s research concluded heavy television users tend to develop a common outlook that eventually makes them more alike politically than they would be otherwise. Heavy users tend to favor more police protection and prisons, a stronger national defense, and oppose the Equal Rights Amendment and busing integration.

An independent researcher, Gerbner founded the Cultural Environment Movement. Now in 57 countries, the non-profit organization includes parents, teachers and activists working for fairness, diversity and responsibility in media.

Its agenda calls for educating communities, teaching critical viewing and supporting public broadcasting.

The United States is the only democratic country where corporations licensed to broadcast in the public interest clearly don’t, he says. Nor is public television getting the financial support that would allow it to produce quality, competing drama as the BBC does.

The Hungarian-born professor, who earned a Bronze Star as a Army parachutist and member of the OSS during World War II, lectures worldwide.

He was contacted by Caputo, a member of the Spokane Academy for Family Television, a small local chapter of of a national grass-roots effort to educate viewers.

For the last two years, the father of four has traveled to elementary schools, senior citizen centers and community centers to talk about the influence of television. He’s distributed tens of thousands of bookmarks on viewing tips and how to complain about offensive programs.

“As a teacher I don’t advocate throwing out your TV,” Caputo says. “The person who doesn’t watch doesn’t influence the community. You want to influence how people use it. I want to teach people how to use it.”

He and members of the Francis-Ignatius Center, a cultural think tank at GU, organized the all-day workshop to produce some local solutions. Gerbner will join a guest panel including Marilyn Cohen, a University of Washington specialist on teenagers and sex in the media.

“Popular culture has provided us with an emptiness that is very wide and very shallow,” Caputo says.

“It’s not just a family problem, it’s a community problem and a Spokane problem.”

“We see George Gerbner as the guy who can bring us together to say where we are now and where we want to go. What kind of future do we want for our children?” said organizer Bill Niggemeyer.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WORKSHOP Dr. George Gerbner will speak Saturday at “Media, Technology and Culture” daylong workshop at Gonzaga University. The event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is $20. For more information, call 328-4220 ext. 3262.