In the 1970s, it took heaven and earth to get the tobacco industry to agree to put those little warning labels on cigarette packages that suggest there might be a link between smoking and serious health problems, such as cancer and heart disease. Last March, it took the threat of a congressional hammer to get the TV industry to finally submit to a labeling system for its own product, parts of which researchers have argued for years can and do harm children and young people.

The TV fare under fire, of course, is violence--an entertainment staple that dates to early Greek dramas, but which on the electronic stage gives many parents and child psychologists fits. President Clinton nailed a political home-run in March by bringing the leaders of the TV industry to heel over the issue, wringing an agreement from them that forces TV to regulate itself by establishing a coding system for programs, similar to the rating system in the movies. By 1998, all programs must carry a code that indicates their levels of violent content. By that time, all TVs sold in this country will be equipped with a so-called "V" chip, a programmable computer chip that will allow parents to squelch the amount of violence coming from their sets almost as easily as they now control the volume.

Or so the theory goes. Ed Donnerstein has his doubts about how effective the new system will be.

"It's a step in the right direction, but it's based on the film rating system and frankly, that doesn't work. That system basically takes into account what adults find offensive--mainly sex and profanity--and not what's most harmful to children."

Donnerstein figures to know of what he speaks. Only a week before Clinton's coup over the big four TV networks in March, a research consortium headed by Donnerstein--chair of the Department of Communication Studies at U-Cal Santa Barbara (and Florida State psychology graduate--Ph.D. '72)--released the National Television Violence Study, a project three years in the making. Funded by the National Cable Television Association, the study, in the words of the American Medical Association, "is the most comprehensive and thorough scientific survey of television violence ever undertaken."

The study (actually the first of three installments with the next one due in the fall) analyzed 2,693 TV programs that aired on 23 channels over a 20-week period. Donnerstein's group found that the majority of the programs contained violence that they judged to be "harmful," that is, violence which opens the door to "learning (how) to behave violently, becoming more desensitized to the harmful consequences of violence and becoming more fearful of being attacked."

This first intallment was largely quantitative, affixing numbers to the amount of television violence out there which researchers found objectionable (they found a lot more than they objected to). The context in which the violence was depicted--whether it was gratuitous, inconsequential or in fact supported a moral lesson--determined the degree to which the study's panel judged it "harmful." Next fall's follow-up will detail the impact of such programming on childrens' behavior, Donnerstein said.

Among the study's findings: 84 percent of violent scenes on TV don't show any long-term consequences at all, and in fact, in better than seven out of every 10 violent scenes shown, the bad guys go unpunished. By far the worst offender: televised movies, 90 percent of which included objectionable violence (and most of which is supplied by cable). Children's programming is quite a learning experience, too--of the kid shows it reviewed, the panel found that nearly 70 percent portrayed violence in a humorous context.

Is it still too much of a leap to say such violent programming is having a negative impact on our children? Donnerstein, who has studied the psychological aspects of cinematic violence and pornography for two decades, is unequivocal on the question.

"The debate is over," he said. "Violence on TV and in the media can have a telling impact on behavior, and there are more than 250 hard-core, experimental studies that all say essentially the same thing."

Predictably, Donnerstein's study met a scornful reception from the media industry. "They hated it, of course," he said. "My response is simple: if they don't think there's a lot of violence on TV and it's having effects, then why did they agree to rate themselves?"

In the study's preface, the researchers stake their claim that TV violence is neither the sole nor even the primary cause of the criminal chaos that is turning American communities into armed camps. "There are many factors that go into creating violent behavior," he said. "All we're saying is that this is just another element we should be concerned about."

What's unusual about the study is that it offers reasons why not all cinematic violence is bad. It boils down to consequences, Donnerstein says. "Schindler's List, for example, is a very violent film, but I wouldn't have a problem with that being on TV because its central message is in reality strongly anti-violent and that's the point that counts."

Whatever the true picture of the cultural impact of cinematic violence may be, politicians are uncommonly fond of portraying the phenomenon as one of the prime bogeymen behind everything from family violence to gang warfare. This year's Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. Bob Dole, has missed few opportunities in recent months to blast Hollywood for what he calls "the mainstreaming of deviancy."

The theme is all too familiar to Ray Fielding, dean of FSU's School of Motion Picture, Television and the Recording Arts. A student and scholar of the entertainment field for nearly 40 years, Fielding says that cinema has been a scapegoat for society's ills since 1908, when Chicago passed the county's first film-censorship ordinance.

"There's a great deal of exaggeration out there about the power of the media, in my opinion," Fielding says. "A lot of mass media research in the past few decades suggests that such power can often be greatly overrated, in fact."

Passage of the telecommunications bill last February is part of a continuing deregulation of the communications industry, Fielding said, that may serve to dilute the impact of electronic messages across the board. "With so many different offerings, so many different points of view, you may find that a particular theme--style, sex, violence, whatever it may be--won't carry the same punch as it may have had when there were fewer channels."

That said, Fielding says he finds it amusing that while TV execs make a habit of telling government panels that their medium is a weakling when it comes to influencing behavior, they aren't shy about telling advertisers about their power to sell everything from religion to toothpaste.

"You can't have it both ways," he chuckled. "But frankly, I'm not convinced they're that good at selling Pepsodent, either."

Lost in the argument over media violence is the question of why there's so much of it out there in the first place. "If we're going to call them moving pictures, then the public has every right to expect movement. Let's face it--violence is visual," says Fielding. "That's why filmmakers love it--they can do something with it. And for better or worse, audiences find it very stimulating."

But the sex-and-gore formula that once paid off so well for Hollywood may be losing some of its box-office luster, Fielding believes. Some of the top winning (and grossing) films in this year's Oscar race went to films with little of either, notably Sense and Sensibility, Apollo 13 and Babe, a tale of a talking pig.

Should film schools make an effort to teach their students the possible consequences that their chosen profession may have on antisocial behavior?

"Should we tell law students who they can and can't represent when they get out of law school?," Fielding asks, rhetorically. "Filmmaking isn't in the ethics business. It's in the arts business, the process of illuminating our life experiences, and life isn't always pretty. "

Some might quibble that films like Diehard II, in which Bruce Willis kills a total of 264 people, stretches the point a bit. Fielding is aware that a good deal of swill parades as art, and that even artfully made films such as Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs---a movie he won't see because of its gratuitous violence--can indeed be troubling to some, but the answer isn't in muzzling the imaginations of filmmakers.

"Trivializing violence is a serious and I think a bad thing," he said. "But my feeling is that controlling this sort of thing begins in the home, not in film schools or in the film industry. That's why I think the V-chip idea is interesting--it helps put the ultimate responsibility for what children see at home in the hands of parents."

Given the beleaguered state of the American family these days, Donnerstein's skepticism might well be justified. Even parents who work hard to keep their families together often find it a losing battle to police what their children are exposed to on the tube. The task won't be made any easier by the new rating system, he predicts, mainly because it will carry essentially the same inticements that his study found make movies and videos with adult themes so irresistable to kids--especially boys aged 10 to 14.