America's First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC's Stockton Helffrich

6. TV Violence

122 6. TV Violence On the heels of World War II, a national survey asked, “Do you know what television is?” and “Have you ever seen a television set in operation?” Some respondents claimed to have had “heard talk” of television, but in 1945, most Americans had never seen a TV picture .1 Four years later, about 2 percent, or approximately twelve million, American homes had television sets. By 1954, this number increased threefold to over thirty-two million.2 In the stretch of just a few years, an astonishing seventy-eight million Americans—more than half the population of the country—were watching television. Children spent more time with it than radio, comic books, friends, and family combined .3 Concern grew over what effect this ubiquitous new commercial medium might have on children, especially in the area of violence, as television became a staple of American culture. Portrayals of violence in American mass media have historically caused anxiety among the nation’s moral guardians. During the nineteenth century, numerous vice societies cautioned that crime stories in newspapers and dime novels would eventually sweep impressionable young readers down the river of wanton misdeed.4 In the 1920s, righteous conservators were horrified at what they considered sin and mayhem in the cinema. Their concerns informed early movie censorship codes and the Payne Fund studies of the late 1920s.5 Radio crime dramas and popular detective magazines were next accused of continuing and reinforcing the chaos. In 1948, comic-book gore and violence were cited as contributing to adolescent delinquency, forcing the Association of Comic Magazine Publishers to draft a code banning torture, sadomasochism, and detailed accounts of criminal acts.6 Then along came network television. The First Congressional Probe In the spring of 1952, Arkansas Representative Ezekial Candler Gathings introduced a congressional resolution—HR 278—sanctioning the first 3RQGLOOR&KLQGG $0 123 T V V I O L E N C E investigation of “television programs [that] . . . place improper emphasis upon crime, violence, and corruption.” The congressman had seen what he termed a “hootchy-kootchy dance” on the television show You Asked For It, declaring the program “obscene and lewd.” Gathings also attributed to the influence of television a wave of college “panty raids” and other “violent” crime, causing trade magazine Sponsor to write, “Whether consciously or not, the medium is engaged in a battle for respectability.”7 After more than five hundred pages of testimony that spanned nearly two weeks of hearings, the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce was unable to come to “any conclusive judgment.”8 However, writes mass-communication historian Keisha L. Hoerrner, thus set a familiar cycle—what she calls the “establishment of the ‘game’ played between the broadcasting industry . . . and Congress. . . . The accepted activity of discussing the problem [of media violence] seems useful to all the players of the game, as the public is assured that both Congress and the industry are concerned about children. No further action is attempted by either side, however. The rules established in 1952 remained in place for decades to follow, so the game could be played over and over again to everyone’s benefit.”9 Hoerrner maintains her observation is an example of “symbolic politics,” a theory developed by political scientist Murray Edelman.10 The Edelman hypothesis suggests that Congress and industry, in this case the broadcast industry, regularly engage in metaphorical rather than essential public discussion in an effort to assuage and beguile public opinion. By using this “all talk and no action” gambit, both sides appear concerned and “working for change,” but, in the end, no substantive legislation is passed to alter the status quo. But this does not mean such government/industry efforts bore no fruit. While threatened government-legislated structural change of commercial broadcasting did not happen, early congressional inquiries did have the effect of prompting network television to reexamine programming and bolster its self-censorship codes. NBC-TV’s chief censor Stockton Helffrich made certain that substantive change did occur in early programs, as did his counterparts at CBS-TV, Herb Carlborg, and at ABC-TV, Grace Johnson.11 For that reason, any direct government intervention—which would have undoubtedly infringed upon the First Amendment—was unnecessary. Helffrich’s Continuity Acceptance 3RQGLOOR&KLQGG $0 124 T V V I O L E N C E Department took seriously its obligation by timely and...