ABSTRACT
I had given this lecture on television violence many times in my more than 15 years of teaching communication. To illustrate my explanation of the theories and research on the subject, I had brought a videotape with clips of violent scenes from children’s cartoon shows. But I wasn’t in a university classroom. I was in a large, ornately decorated, ceremonial room in the Old Executive Office Building, directly adjacent to the White House. My “class” on this hot summer Washington afternoon— seated around a long, polished conference table—included the Vice President of the United States, several prominent Senators and Congressmen, and nine representatives from the leading national education, health and child advocacy organizations.
