Dialogue: We're infected by electronic poison

It will come as no surprise to many of us that a link has been made between violence in films, videos and electronic games, on television and the internet, and the increasing amount of violence in society, particularly among children.

Nor will it have been a surprise to read the even more sinister finding of the American Federal Trade Commission that the entertainment industry has been deliberately targeting graphic material at underage audiences.

The commission's investigation, begun after the massacre at Columbine High School in April last year, reveals that producers of films, electronic games and records consistently and pervasively court teenagers and younger children for material that their own self-regulating ratings systems deem appropriate for adults only.

What astounds me about this is that it has taken so long for such a connection to be made by an agency that is in a position to do something about it. Because millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have known for years that the electronic media have been responsible for helping to undermine values of decency, respect and family cohesiveness.

What I do find surprising is that the report has confined itself to violence when the electronic media have also been responsible for encouraging a breakdown in our values system right across the board - from promoting selfishness and rampant consumerism as virtues to portraying perverse and sickening sexual deviancy.

And all along, when the matter has been raised, spokespeople for the mediums accused, television in particular, have blithely told us that what they put before our eyes and into our ears has no effect on those who see or hear it. This in spite of the fact that electronic advertising is a zillion-dollar industry designed solely to influence you and me to do what the advertiser wants us to do - buy a product or a service.

Which begs the very simple question: if electronic advertising has an influence on the viewer and listener, how come violence, pornography and every other sort of base and uncivilised human behaviour doesn't? I know that's a hackneyed argument, but its central question is as valid today as it was when it was first raised decades ago. And it's one that has never been satisfactorily answered.

We, of course, are as much to blame as the media, for we have, with one or two notable and unsuccessful exceptions, all sat back and let it happen. We have watched the fabric of our society rot because too few of us have had the inclination to do anything about it.

It is a frightening reflection on society that it has taken a series of school massacres in the United States to goad officialdom there into action. And it is to be hoped that this first report is only a beginning and that similar inquires will spread wider to take in all the other ghastly, destructive anti-social putrescence that pervades our electronic media and poisons the minds not just of children but of adults, too.

In view of the epidemic of child torture and killing in this country - not to mention murder, rape, paedophilia, assault and thievery - those looking for answers might forget about parents who smack their children and take a close look at what television, electronic games and the internet are putting before citizens these days.

Because it is so ubiquitous, television here is by far the worst offender. Any night of the week you can tune into TV programmes that glamorise violence and promiscuous sex. If you get sick of guns and knives and blood and guts and mangled dead bodies and you have Sky, then you can watch men and women, women and women and men and men indulging in all sorts of sexual acts.

They call it "soft porn." Which makes me wonder: what the hell, then, is "hard porn"?

To find that out, all you have to do is plug into the internet, which will provide you with words and images of every form of human depravity ever devised, from hate-filled racism to making a bomb, and including more than 32 million pages of pornography - hundreds of thousands of still and moving pictures showing in minute, explicit detail every form of sexual congress ever invented, including both men and women having sex with children and animals.

And to look at or download any of this stuff, all you need is a credit card.

Just what is to be done about it, particularly the internet, is quite beyond me, for all of us are inherently evil and as long as those who seek to profit from what we politely call the lowest common denominator provide us with this sort of titillation, too many of us will buy it.

Greed and immorality have us by the throat.

garth_george@herald.co.nz