This seems rather ironic to me, and apparently to Keith Olbermann as well. In last night’s “Countdown” program, Mr. Olbermann gave Glenn Beck the coveted honor of “Worst Person in the World” for the disconnect between two of Beck’s positions.
On the one hand, Mr. Beck is a persistent critic of gun control. But on the other hand, he is quick to criticize the video game industry, and even television itself, for much of the evil in the world. To put it another way, Beck is fine with people having all of the guns they want, but we should be outraged over Grand Theft Auto. Watch the clip below, and judge for yourself if there is an inconsistency between these two arguments.
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Of course, the violence in many video games is remarkable. The violence on much of television is remarkable. And much of the research by George Gerbner and others in the Cultivation School of media analysis clearly demonstrates how the media influence our attitudes, our values, and our beliefs. So while we should certainly be concerned about the violence in Grand Theft Auto, our concern should be about how such violent media content cultivates, legitimates and glorifies our attitudes toward violence. That’s quite a different argument than the much weaker assertion that video games cause violence.
Although Beck doesn’t clearly cite the “report from the American Medical Association” that shows a link between TV and murder rates, I’m pretty sure he is referring to a 1992 article by Brandon Centerwall. The research behind that article has been thoroughly criticized, and subsequent research employing Centerwall’s methodology has shown that in some cases, TV correlates with a decline in murder rates. In any case, I think most media scholars are careful not to make the leap from a simple correlation to a causal connection.
Put simply, video games don’t kill, but guns do. OK, people using guns kill. People using video games only kill aliens. Or realistic-looking images of people that spring back to life anyway after a reboot.
I’m not a big fan of government regulation. I understand the value of the first amendment and the second amendment. But in my mind, the gun control debate is of much greater consequence than the video game debate.