"There's Trouble Right Here in River City"

In this YouTube video clip from the musical “The Music Man” , Robert Preston’s character, a con man, wants to distract the townsfolk’s attention away from the new pool hall in town and towards his money making scheme of pretending to organise a boys band and  then absconding with the money from instrument and uniform purchases.  He creates a ‘moral panic’ in the town and particularly amongst the parents by suggesting that the pool hall is the single cause of their children’s worrying and delinquent behaviours, and hence the need to introduce a ‘wholesome’ pastime, such as a youth orchestra.

Moral Panics have been described as a “condition, episode, person or group of persons, which emerge to become a defined threat to societal values “(Cohen 1972). By observing the YouTube clip above, it can be seen that a moral panic is not a new phenomonen and generally the concern for the panic is directed at the youth.  The behaviour of youth is often seen as immoral, and threatening to the accepted norms of the culture. 
The term, first thought to be coined by sociologist Stanley Cohen in the 1960s, was used to describe “the kind of media hysteria  generalised about young people out of control” during the Brighton riots between the Mods and the Rockers”(Cohen in Fine 2006) He went further to suggest that the public reaction to the riots quickly escalated due to sensationalist media coverage and therefore led to bad policy and laws being made.

Catharine Lumby and Duncan Fine in their book,  “Why TV is good for our Kids: Raising 21^st Century Children, describe moral panic or media panic as a phenomonen which “feeds off blind fear and unthinking prejudice” and claim that it is the latter which often governs debates about what and how much children are watching on Television.

Moral or media panics have traditionally appeared around new media technologies and within popular culture. Comic books in the 1930s, Rock and Roll music in the fifties, and even novels, back in the 1700s, were all once the subject of grave concern.

Lumby and Fine are quick to point out that moral or media panic is not equivalent to real life moral situations or dilemnas. They are more about “hyperbolic  fears”. The problem, as they see it, is that “moral or media panics distract from the real issues of society by suggesting that drug, violence, obesity, and child abuse, for examples, are the result of a single monolithic cause such as TV, rap music or Muslims (Fine 2006 )

Lusted (1991) concurs.  He states that “the issue of TV violence reflects the broader concern of the nature of society and that the underlying causes of many moral panics have little, if anything, to do with the subject or event with which they focus their concern.”

Take for instance the tragic story of little James Bulger. This little two year old toddler was taken and murdered by two juveniles. The case was related to a violent film “Child’s Play 3” which the two offenders had previously watched.  Now although children had, in the past,  been murdered by other children, the tragic death of James Bulger provoked a  huge reaction from the British public. The story, largely due to its portrayal in the media, led to the belief that all children were in danger from each other and that certain films could produce child murderers.  The dangers posed by moral panics are continuously exaggerated and distorted by the media with the result that public concern is heightened. They often present reasons and scapegoats for the occurrence of certain events in order to divert attention from more real and greater problems found within society.

In Chapter 2 of their book entitled “ TV Villains: Media Panic”, Lumby and Fine challenge two claims made about television and that is,  put simply, that watching TV makes our kids stupid and fat . They address these claims by explaining what best research tells us.

In 1998, the Teletubbies came under attack. The program was accused from everything from gay lifestyle and illicit drug taking to consumerism and obesity. (Howard and Roberts 1999).   The media panic that surrounded this program was very explicit, with media stories using ‘ addictive’ language such as  kids “glued” to the screen or ‘addicted to watching the show’.  The misplaced fear of little children actually enjoying a television program  extended to Sesame Street, with a moral panic arising about them turning into drug addicts or homosexuals. Although Sesame Street and Teletubbies were both made to appeal to and educate very young children and with a lot of contribution by Early Childhood educators and experts, the general concensus  for parents was  anything that interesting coming at their children from a TV must be dangerous (Lumby and Fine, 2006)

Guilt will always fuel a moral or media panic. Lumby and Fine discuss the guilt trip parents experience for letting their children watch television and describe a US study that  suggested that television viewing would actually increase the likelihood of developing attention deficit disorder. The study also linked the idea that TV has some sort of hypnotic quality designed to empty children’s minds and make them passive recipients. (Fine 2006). 
The study, published in a pediatric journal in America, treated television as an ‘intruder’ in our lives, rather than a routine part of it. It assumed that television was a virus and something that was overstimulating and to be viewed suspiciously. At the heart of the study was the idea that television watching is passive and that’s where the opposition and hence panic begins.

Lumby and Fine respond by citing careful research into children’s television watching. One such researcher, an academic theorist, Professor David Buckingham reports that his studies, over the past two decades, show that even very young children actively engage with TV programs and use them to create their own stories. (Fine 2006 ) Similarly, Professor John Hartley, a renowned television studies scholar, further pointed out that doctors, and specialists that report in these studies are used to working with physically and mentally unwell people and would find it difficult to “ take off their worrying hat”. He suggested that if these ‘experts’ wanted to contributed to a debate about television viewing by children, they needed to take into account all the substantial research that shows that television does lots of good – as well as harm. (Fine 2006 )

In essence, Lumby and Fine define the message of their book through this chapter: “We must support our children to use their TV viewing wisely”

Television has long been a villain as far as moral or media panics are concerned. So when you throw children and obesity into the mix, the panic becomes even greater. In this chapter of their book, Lumby and Fine discuss the obesity factor as one of many anxieties for which TV is “carrying the can”. They critique many reports, journal articles and studies that highlight childhood obesity and suggest that TV is the culprit for making our children fat!  Ultimately they discovered that watching television was not related to a lack of physical activity in children. It was also noted that children who used TV and computers regularly were more likely to  be physically active. The key issues were what children ate and how much.

It is quite natural to be concerned about corruption and children. Children are impressionable and need to be protected. The adults need to approach moral panics that are created by the media, especially around television and film watching, with rational concern and not the ‘blind and hyperbolic fear’ that is being promoted.  
It is important to ask ourselves that in a culture totally engulfed by technology and media, what are the real problems for our youth and what are the ones created by knee jerk responses and ‘unthinking prejudices’?  Our response as educators should be to look rationally at the issues and not to get caught up with the controversial content and the panic created.

REFERENCES:

Archive. (2001). Retrieved October 12, 2010, from Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2001/20010423h.jpg

Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee .

Lumby, C. a. (2006). Why TV is good for kids : raising 2 l s t century children. sydney: MacMillan.

Lusted, D. (1991). The Media Studies Book. . London and New York: Routledge.

Trouble Right Here in River City. (2007). Retrieved October 12, 2010, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s60hOgqLFGg