Channel Violence?

11 April 2012

Channel Five was condemned last night for the amount of violence in the films it shows.

Five, which has claimed it wants to move upmarket, came out worst in a survey of 205 films shown on all five terrestrial channels last year.

Analysts found that they contained a shocking total of nearly 2,300 violent incidents, up almost 20 per cent on 2002.

They included hundreds of attacks using guns, knives or other weapons. Crimes shown included murder, rape, assault, and robbery with violence.

Almost half the violent incidents were on Five.

Mediawatch UK, which carried out the survey, said the increasingly disturbing films put out by the TV networks, with Five the worst culprit, were helping to create a more violent society.

Its director, John Beyer, said: 'What is normal on TV soon becomes normal in society, and although the people in the business know how influential it is, they are failing to do anything to help.'

He pointed out that the survey, Promoting a Culture of Violence, was being issued exactly 40 years after the organisation's founder, Mary Whitehouse, launched her campaign to clean up TV.

Mr Beyer said: 'Mary Whitehouse was very prescient - but TV executives still aren't listening to the evidence about the damage violent films do.

'While the Government is trying to control rising violence, TV executives, particularly at Channel 5, are continuing to glamorise violence.

'They talk about reflecting society, but they've done an awful lot to make it the violent society it

is. Channel 5 is a particularly clear example - and while Channel 5 films made up 44.6 per cent of the films monitored, the results are indicative of the type of films shown on the channel.'

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said Five should start doing its bit to make Britain a safer place.

He said: 'There is too much violence on television - and it's no coincidence that teachers are telling us schools are more violent than ever, and that violence on the streets is at record levels.'

Of the 205 films chosen for analysis by Mediawatch volunteers, 47 were on BBC1, seven on BBC2, 25 on ITV1, 34 on Channel 4 and 92 on Five.

They contained 1,121 incidents involving firearms, 765 violent assaults, 103 explosions or arson attacks and 277 incidents involving knives or other weapons.

The number of films shown on terrestrial TV has dropped over the past five years from 3,259 in 1999 to 2,880 in 2003. Five shows around a third of the total.

Earlier this year scientist Lord Robert Winston revealed that experiments had shown violence on screen could directly cause toddlers to be more violent.

A Five spokesman said last night that its output complied with regulations laid down by broadcasting watchdog Ofcom and it had received only six complaints from viewers this year about violence.

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