By: Rob Brown
BLUE BELL, PA--A study conducted since the 1980s, which found that PG-13 rated movies today contain more violence than R-rated movies released when this study was first conducted, made headlines across every news outlet earlier this month. As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, if Thor: The Dark World, a superhero movie just recently released, “was released in the ‘80s, it might have earned an R rating.”
In comparing the Inquirer to the New York Times and USA Today, all three print publications came out with the same story, all giving the same findings and the effects they can have on moviegoers, but all told in slightly different ways.
The New York Times’ reporting of the study is pretty much straightforward, except it doesn’t mention the intensifying violence in PG-13 movies over the last 30 years; these results, which found that violence in films has doubled since 1950, and gun violence in PG-13 movies has tripled since 1985, are not even hinted at in the article. No movie examples are given, but they do bring up the study’s authors and the message they hope to send to the Motion Picture Association of America, demanding changes to its rating system. But where did the New York Times find this study?
The answer lies in USA Today and the Inquirer’s coverage – the online journal Pediatrics, which will feature the study in next month’s issue. These two publications go further with specific sources and information, with notable and significant mentions that since the PG-13 rating was first introduced in 1984, violence dropped in movies rated PG and lower, while R rated movies were flatline. That was, of course, until 2009, when the level of violence in PG movies shot up.
But in terms of overall coverage of this story by all three publications, the New York Times, USA Today and the Inquirer covered most, if not all, bases, from what the study revealed, to the implications of Hollywood’s implied motto that, in the words of Daniel Romer of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, “violence sells.” These newspapers, in their continuing efforts to cover all sides of the story, reported on the need for change as said by the researchers behind the study. Except for the New York Times, which fails to mention that violence in today’s PG-13 movies has not only increased over the last 30 years, but that it skyrocketed.
BLUE BELL, PA--A study conducted since the 1980s, which found that PG-13 rated movies today contain more violence than R-rated movies released when this study was first conducted, made headlines across every news outlet earlier this month. As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, if Thor: The Dark World, a superhero movie just recently released, “was released in the ‘80s, it might have earned an R rating.”
In comparing the Inquirer to the New York Times and USA Today, all three print publications came out with the same story, all giving the same findings and the effects they can have on moviegoers, but all told in slightly different ways.
The New York Times’ reporting of the study is pretty much straightforward, except it doesn’t mention the intensifying violence in PG-13 movies over the last 30 years; these results, which found that violence in films has doubled since 1950, and gun violence in PG-13 movies has tripled since 1985, are not even hinted at in the article. No movie examples are given, but they do bring up the study’s authors and the message they hope to send to the Motion Picture Association of America, demanding changes to its rating system. But where did the New York Times find this study?
The answer lies in USA Today and the Inquirer’s coverage – the online journal Pediatrics, which will feature the study in next month’s issue. These two publications go further with specific sources and information, with notable and significant mentions that since the PG-13 rating was first introduced in 1984, violence dropped in movies rated PG and lower, while R rated movies were flatline. That was, of course, until 2009, when the level of violence in PG movies shot up.
But in terms of overall coverage of this story by all three publications, the New York Times, USA Today and the Inquirer covered most, if not all, bases, from what the study revealed, to the implications of Hollywood’s implied motto that, in the words of Daniel Romer of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, “violence sells.” These newspapers, in their continuing efforts to cover all sides of the story, reported on the need for change as said by the researchers behind the study. Except for the New York Times, which fails to mention that violence in today’s PG-13 movies has not only increased over the last 30 years, but that it skyrocketed.
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