February 16, 1995: Vol26n17: Real weapons, not TV guns, cause violence, UB study says

Congressional pressure on the television networks to tone down
violence is an "easy fix" that ignores other, more pertinent social
problems that contribute to violence in society, a UB researcher
contends.
	"I don't think the answer lies in cleaning up television,"
says Mary Cassata, UB professor of communication. "I think it's the
homelessness, the guns that are out there; the people who are shooting
each other are not watching TV.
	"Blaming the violence on television for the violence in
society is an easy fix," Cassata says. "There are more important
things to clean up-more important social problems-than television."
	Cassata and colleague Barbara J. Irwin of the Department of
Communication Studies at Canisius College voiced this viewpoint in a
paper that was presented last fall at the International Conference on
Violence in the Media, sponsored by St. John's University and held at
the New York Hilton at Rockefeller Center.
	The paper, which Cassata says takes a viewpoint that is the
opposite of that of many attending the conference, outlined a case
study of the 1977 trial of Ronny Zamora, a then-15-year-old boy
charged with murdering his elderly next-door neighbor.
	The Zamora case-the first in which a defense lawyer contended
that his client was not responsible for his actions because he watched
television-brought to the forefront the question of the effects of
television violence on subsequent behavior.
	The trial attracted worldwide attention and was televised
under Florida's then-experimental mandate to use television in the
courtroom.
n preparing their case study, Cassata
 	and Irwin considered previous research on television violence,
an extensive examination and evaluation of witnesses' depositions,
courtroom transcripts, official police records, psychiatrists' reports
and extensive conversations with Ellis Rubin, Zamora's attorney.
	"This (Zamora case) is the classic example of the scapegoating
of the media by exaggerating their influence and masking the real
causes for violence in society," Cassata and Irwin assert. "The
defense placed too much emphasis on television as a cause, rather than
as a contributing factor, among many others."
	Zamora had psychiatric problems, Cassata says, noting that he
came from a dysfunctional family in which his stepfather beat him and
treated him differently from the other children in the house. In
addition, Zamora blamed himself for the drowning death of a friend.
	As a young child, Zamora had been parked in front of the
television while his parents, who could not afford day care, worked.
As he grew up, the boy continued to watch inordinate amounts of
television-action/detective shows were his favorite-to escape from his
home life.
	Rubin contended that Zamora "was suffering from and acted
under the influence of prolonged, intense, involuntary, subliminal
television intoxication. Through the excessive and long-continued use
of this intoxicant, a mental condition of insanity was produced."
	The jury did not buy the argument, and Zamora was sent to
prison.
	Cassata agrees that television did not cause the crime.
	"It wasn't television that shot Mrs. Haggart. Ronny shot her
because of his mental problems," she says. "Television was not to
blame. If the right defense had been used, or Ronny had been given
(psychiatric) help, things might have turned out differently."
	However, Cassata and Irwin, who also have been chronicling
instances of violence in daytime television, acknowledge that
"television may have sustained Ronny in his estrangement from the
mainstream of American life."
	The researchers suggest that the media-particularly
television-can play a positive role by educating the public about
guns, alcohol and drugs, and their relation to violence.