ABSTRACT
A telling indictment of the American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) position is inherent in findings on the effects of television that are ignored in their statement. Research has long since gone beyond the issue of violence. What is especially distressing about ABC's effort to discredit a carefully developed assessment of research is that it only serves to confuse and deter the considerable opportunity for constructive change. The ABC argument is scientifically indefensible. The ABC response reads like a slick brief for the defense replete with carefully worded misinterpretations, omission of large bodies of relevant evidence, and sheer misstatements of facts. The ABC statement supports its contention of a decrease in the amount of violence by reference to a CBS study not subject to peer review or other scientific scrutiny and not regularly published. ABC argues, "the CBS study and the Gerbner study utilize radically different definitions of violence and consequently arrive at very different conclusions".
