Newtown Massacre Changes Plans at Movie and TV Studios

When news broke about the massacre in Newtown (CT), the USA cable channel jumped into action. Using key words like “shooting,” “school” and “children,” executives reviewed scripts and identified problematic episodes of shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “NCIS” that were about to run.

Movie studios and television networks used to confront this balancing act a couple times a decade. But this year alone there have been three incidents that have required a crisis response — the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida last spring; the Aurora, Colo., movie-theater shooting over the summer; and now the Newtown school massacre. The shooting has prompted soul searching of a more personal kind in the entertainment capital. Hollywood’s power lunches have been filled in recent days with conversations about hypocrisy, according to people in the industry: Many of those who are liberal leaning and support gun control also make their livings selling violent images. There is also a creeping dread in Hollywood that the industry will be drawn into a governmental crackdown on violent imagery.