CANADIANS CONCERNED ABOUT VIOLENCE IN ENTERTAINMENT

FINANCIALLY SELF-SUPPORTING, largely through annual membership dues and personal donations, C-CAVE is an independent, national, non-profit organization founded in 1983 by a group of concerned parents, teachers, and health professionals in Hamilton, Ontario. It is now based in Toronto and its primary objective has always been to provide public education on what the research shows on media violence. From the beginning, members have believed that the public has a right to know that the overwhelming weight of evidence points toward harmful effects.

Affiliation was established with the American National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), founded in 1980, and the International Coalition on Violence in Entertainment (ICAVE), based in Champaign, Illinois which followed. The founder of both organizations, child psychiatrist Thomas Radecki in 1980, also acted as research director until 1992. NCTV, itself, was established as an outgrowth of television monitoring initiated by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Parent-Teacher Association (APTA).

NCTV and ICAVE, worked for over twenty years, assisting in the work started by social scientists and concerned citizens around the world dating back at least fifty years. Their data, in turn, have been gathered from a broad spectrum of researchers, educators, health professionals, parents, members of the media, and members of the academic community. Partly as a result, the AMA, American Psychiatric Association (APA), American Psychological Association (APA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Canadian Pediatrics Association (CPA), APTA, the last three U.S. Surgeon Generals, the U.S. Government, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Research Council, and the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have all concluded that there is overwhelming evidence that television and entertainment violence causes important increases in real-life violence and aggression in normal children and adult viewers. (Huston, et al., 1992; APA, 1993.)

In the early years C-CAVE members were assisted in their commitment to public education on the issue of media violence by the provision of reviews on research data as they appeared in bimonthly newsletters and news releases published by ICAVE and NCTV. More recent, additional resources have been provided for C-CAVE and others in Canada through the literature reviewing process entailed in my commitment to the completion of this book and the doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto which preceded it. My examination of the social, political, and economic conditions surrounding the issue of media violence is an outgrowth, both of graduate studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto and community based activities as chairperson of C-CAVE for a period of over 15 years.

C-CAVE has always collaborated on various issues related to the subject of media violence and influences of popular culture with other grass roots organizations, members of the education and research communities, journalists, students, and both elected and appointed government officials. Although the composition of the C-CAVE board has changed since the organization was first established in 1983, it has, over the years, involved a broad cross-section of society. Collectively, board members and advisors have represented expertise in the areas of public health, psychiatric nursing, medicine, law, independent television production, broadcasting, marketing, advertising, parenting, community activism, fund raising, research and teaching at all levels within the education system including post secondary media studies.

Since 1995, my activity on behalf of C-CAVE has evolved into a more consultative role in collaboration with other members monitoring CBSC and CRTC accountability on the issue of industry self-regulation and collaboration with other community organizations opposed to increasing corporate domination in all non-profit sectors of society. Close links exist, in particular, with the Cultural Environment Movement, founded in 1996 at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, of which C-CAVE was an invited co-sponsor; Lion and Lamb Project, Bethesda, Maryland; Rocky Mountain Media Watch, Denver, Colorado; MediaWatch, Toronto; Canadians Against Violence (CAVEAT), Burlington, Ontario; Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto; Canadians Against Sexual Exploitation, Toronto; Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Toronto; Science for Peace, University of Toronto; Citizens Concerned About Free Trade, Vancouver, Saskatoon, Toronto; and the Bnai Brith Antidefamation League, Toronto.

Joint C-CAVE/CEM working group meetings are held several times each year, usually in the Greater Toronto Area. Additional opportunities for interaction with members of the general public have presented themselves through speeches and workshops I've given on the subject of media violence, locally, nationally, and internationally, both within the community and at various universities.

My interaction with members of the print media has been facilitated through interviews with journalists from some of the following newspapers, magazines and journals: The National Post, Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Regina Leader-Post, Winnipeg Sun, Windsor Star, London Free Press, Peterborough Examiner, Hamilton Spectator, Whig-Standard (Kingston, ON), Huronia Sunday (Barrie, ON), Niagara Falls Review (ON), Castlegar Sun (BC), Montreal Star, L'Actualite (PQ), Buffalo News, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Detroit News, Slave River Journal (NWT), Canadian Living, Maclean's, Resources Magazine, Faith Today (Toronto), Reader's Digest, Foothills Medical Journal (Calgary), Christian Science Monitor, Teaching Magazine (Toronto), Toronto Computes, Home Computing and Entertainment (Toronto), Marketing Magazine (Toronto), Ryerson Review of Journalism (Toronto), and Media and Values (California).

Radio programs and stations involving interviews on the topic of media violence have included some of the following: CFRB (Toronto); CBC (including Cross-Country Check-up, Metro Morning News, and As It Happens [Toronto], Radio Noon [Montreal], and talk shows in Windsor, Winnipeg, Regina, and Halifax); CHOC (Hamilton); CHOO (Ajax, ON); CHFI-FM (Toronto); CKNW-AM (Vancouver); CJCA (Edmonton); CHED (Edmonton); QR77 (Terry Moore Show, Calgary); Q92 (Sudbury); CKWW (London); CJME (Regina); Radio Wire Service on Family News and Focus (Ottawa); CJRT-FM (On the Arts, Toronto); Q107 (Toronto); CKWW-AM (Windsor); CKLW (The Melonie Dveau Show, Windsor); CFPL (London); CISN (Edmonton); WOAI (San Antonio, TX); National Radio (Washington, DC); CBS (New York, NY); Radio Canada (PQ and NB); CJAD Radio (Montreal); University of Toronto Radio; Carlton University Radio; University of Ottawa Radio; University of Victoria Radio; and the University of Western Ontario Radio. Interviews I have had on the program Family News and Focus, produced by Focus on the Family based in Vancouver, is syndicated on approximately 200 radio stations throughout Canada.

Television appearances have included Canada AM; CBC Midday; CBC Prime Time; CBC Evening News; CBC Newsworld (in a wide variety of programming including Face-Off with Judy Rebeck and Claire Hoy and a forum on mass media co-sponsored with Queen's University); CBC's Beth Harrington; TVO's Imprint, Between the Lines and Studio 2; YTV; Citytv News; a Citytv special, Hollywood and Guns; a special on The New Music with Denise Donlon; the MuchMusic specialty channel News on cable television; CTV's The Shirley Show; CTV's Evening News; Vision TV; Global TV; the Toronto based Italian television channel; Rogers Cable Community Television; Ryerson TV; Trillium Community Cablesystems, The Rhonda London Show and The Michael Coren Show, CTS.

Other opportunities for public interaction have arisen from invitations I've received over the years to participate on an advisory basis in the work of the committees who released the following reports: the Report on the Powers of the Ontario Film Review Board released by the Ontario Law Reform Commission in 1992; Television Violence: Fraying our Social Fabric released by the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture in 1993; and Changing the Landscape: Ending Violence-Achieving Equality, completed by Marshall & Vallaincourt in 1993. Oral and written submissions were also made to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs in Ottawa in June, 1994 and in February, 1995; to the Department of Justice pre-conference for the 9th United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders held in Cairo, Egypt in April, 1995; the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in October, 1995 and October, 1998; the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, April, 1999.

C-CAVE activities invariably interface with my service on the Executive Committee of the Cultural Environment Movement based at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; on the Executive Board of the Center for Global Media Studies based at Washington State University; as an External Research Assistant at the LaMarsh Center for Violence and Conflict Resolution at York University in Toronto and in my role as editor of, The Learning Edge, the newsletter for the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education.