Draft Bill: Sen Rockefeller Considering Violent Video Legislation

Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee and historically one of the loudest voices for media violence regulation, wants to introduce a bill that would require the National Academy of Sciences to study the impact of violent video games and video programming on kids.

Commissioning studies is not as threatening a bill as one that would, say, authorize the Federal Communications Commission to regulate video violence as it does indecency, which Chairman Rockefeller has championed before. But it clearly indicates his interest in not letting the violence conversation end when the cable news cycle wheels on to the next big story, though it would have to continue without any immediate input from the study. The study would not be due for a year and a half, at least according to the draft language supplied by a source. The goal of the study is to determine if there is a causal relationship between video violence and aggressiveness or other harmful effects on kids, with a particular emphasis on whether video games have a "unique impact" due to their interactive, and "extraordinarily vivid" portrayals of violence. It also asks for the answer to whether violence in video programming has harmful effects distinguishable from other types of media and whether it causes long-lasting cognitive harm.