COMMUNICATIONS-COSTA RICA: Advertisers Boycott Violent TV Shows

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Néfer Muñoz

SAN JOSE, Nov 15 2000 (IPS) - María Jesús Garro is an active Costa Rican seven-year-old who loves to watch cartoons on television, but she would never guess that she is seeing a violent act committed every two minutes.

A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) indicates that in Costa Rica’s five most-watched children’s shows, minors under age 12 see an average of 39 violent incidents per hour.

“Cartoons are very nice. At school, my friends and I talk about what they show on the ‘tele,’ about what happens on the programmes,” says María Jesús, who is in first grade at the primary school in Cartago, a town 22 km east of San José.

Another report, “State of the Nation” by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has revealed that domestic violence jumped from 15,000 cases reported in 1997 to 26,000 last year.

Faced with this and other data, the governmental Citizen Ombudsman’s Office launched a campaign to curb those factors that apparently foment violence – this in a country that for years has enjoyed international fame as a place of peace and tranquillity.

The Ombudsman’s Office, which keeps watch over and protects citizens in their relations with the State, is asking businesses to avoid purchasing advertising time during television programmes that contain violence or that could incite aggressive behaviour in children.

“We are not endorsing a moralistic plan or censorship, but rather we want to inform and raise awareness among the business community,” Sandra Piszk, the Citizen Ombudsman, told IPS.

Piszk explained that many local and foreign advertisers are unaware of the content of the programmes during which their publicity is broadcast.

It appears the Ombudsman Office’s campaign is beginning to bear fruit. This week the National Bank of Costa Rica, the country’s largest, announced that it would no longer purchase advertising space during TV programmes that contain scenes of violence.

Pipasa, a poultry company, is one of Costa Rica’s largest firms and a top advertising presence. It has joined the National Bank in restricting its ads to broadcast during non-violent shows.

According to official data, the total paid for television advertising in Costa Rica reaches 63 million dollars annually.

“What we need is a code of ethics and for entrepreneurs to know that their money is contributing to building the kind of country we want,” said the official.

It is an ongoing debate among psychologists and sociologists around the world. To what extent do the communications media influence social behaviour, or even serve as a stimulus for violence?

Regardless of the answer, studies prove that Costa Rican children do indeed observe a great deal of violence on television.

Research by UNICEF and the UN’s Latin American Institute for Crime Prevention shows that the violent acts most often seen on TV by minors are defamation (28.2 percent), injury (14.4 percent), threats (12.9 percent) and property damage (9.1 percent).

The report also indicates that in children’s programming in Costa Rica, for every constructive proposition shown, there are seven negatives, which can include verbal aggression, humiliation, authoritarianism, physical aggression, manipulation, intimidation, subjugation and deception.

“Television is one of the major means of education, which is why violent programmes pose a risk of delinquency,” Mónica Nágel, Costa Rican Justice Minister, told IPS.

Nágel, who supports the Ombudsman’s strategy, says the solution is not to ban violent TV programmes that target children, because “it is not a problem of laws but rather of the business community’s attitude, and (I hope) that, little by little, the TV stations broadcast fewer violent shows.”

The Ombudsman’s Office organised a forum for entrepreneurs and media leaders to get together and study similar campaigns conducted in the United States and Canada, where more than 40 big companies, led by the transnational giant Procter and Gamble, are using their advertising dollars to press for a reduction in violence on television.

If such initiatives in Costa Rica are successful, perhaps María Jesús and thousands of other children in her country will have more family-friendly options on the TV screen, and not just cartoons with figures that spit fire and ice to eliminate their enemies.