Meanwhile, in the Asbury Park (NJ) Press, Paul K. McMasters of the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Virginia pens an op-ed decrying the U.S. Senate's recent passage of the CAMRA Act, which calls for a $90 million study of the effects of media on children. McMasters writes:

"In the 15th century, the printing press was a technological advance revolutionizing the ability of those who published books to inform, provoke and entertain. Those suspected of using this 'new media' to promote heresy or insurrection were threatened with the rack or worse."

"How little things have changed. These days, those suspected of wielding new media to inflict psychic injuries among the young and weak of mind also are threatened — with expert studies that seek to prove harm by putting reason on the rack."

"Those who believe that certain media are a menace in any hands but their own obsess over the potential negatives and dismiss the demonstrated positives of electronic media. They show impatience with common sense, disrespect for parental responsibility and an unrequited infatuation with 'studies' when courts fail to support their attempts to regulate."

"We should not be surprised that yet another round of research on the potential harm caused by electronic media is being ordered by legislation passed by the U.S. Senate... the drive to tame new media never loses momentum or new targets."

"As much as political leaders, advocates, researchers and some parents would like to hope otherwise, sure proof of the cause-and-effect relationship between media content and bad behavior among adults or children remains elusive."

"But the assumption is pervasive, especially when an event occurs that shocks our conscience and sends us in a desperate search for causes and answers. For example, when a 25-year-old Montreal man used a semiautomatic rifle to turn a junior college campus into a killing field, many minds raced to the conclusion that video games made him do it..."

"Being against violence or indecency for our kids is low-hanging political fruit for politicians. They can't help themselves when they exploit our understandable concerns..."

"To argue that violence in media causes actual violence, or that indecency in media causes harmful sexual adventurism, is to argue that the cleansing of movies, TV, radio, video games, comic books, the Internet and even books will remove crime, perversion and other unpleasantness from our midst."