The television industry externalizes harm by shifting blame onto parents’ failings

Evidence

Viewed from a producer’s perspective, “Are kids from unstable environments triggered by television violence? They’re [ sic] not having parents is a more serious problem” (Baldwin & Lewis, 1972). Parental culpability is often linked with the familial antidote argument: By providing a warm, secure, and wholesome home environment, parents, it is claimed, can neutralize any potential negative impact of massive exposure to inhumane conduct. If they cannot create a counteracting environment they should control what their children watch on television. “Today’s mothers don’t acknowledge that kind of responsibility; instead, they expect television to be a babysitter for them” (Baldwin & Lewis, 1972). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 919

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to rhetorical blame-shifting as moral disengagement — the industry simultaneously denies its own causal role and demands parental monitoring it refuses to enable. — connects to: Workfare reality TV structures blame to fall on individuals rather than systems — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 631
• SEED: Potential essay on how industries dodge regulation by shifting responsibility to individuals while blocking the information individuals would need.