ABSTRACT
One fundamental contrast between American and Brazilian television is that American entertainment programming presents many more violent acts than occur in reality, whereas Brazilian prime-time programs contain fewer such acts. Brazil offers one particularly striking contrast with the United States in crime reporting. In the Brazilian media, reports of violent acts increase from national TV news, to local TV news, to newspapers. The Brazilian censors concentrated, however, on politics and violence rather than on nudity and sex. Poverty and inequality probably make much more potent contributions to violence and crime than does television. Statistical associations between unemployment, poverty, and crime rates have been well documented in the United States and other nations. The American preoccupation with adventure, exploration, and forging social relationships among strangers shows up not just in television, films, and fiction, but in science for example, in anthropology.
