But they also have a job to do. They earn their money from entertainment, the sort of entertainment we all purchase and ‘enjoy’. Violence rates better than just about anything else, with the exception of sexual content, which is generally much more entertaining but is greatly restricted in our media by those who believe sex is the root of all evil.

In recent years, there’s been so much censorship of sex within our media (a priority area for our politicians) that it’s hardly any wonder those working in the media have turned to violence to make their profits – giving viewers and players what they want, out of the available choices.

When you look into what makes something entertaining viewing, you discover there’s a particular formula for drawing in viewers or players and that formula begins with Rule Number One: overcome the audience’s initial reluctance to involve themselves in the subject matter, something that normally occurs when viewing anything new.

How do you do that?

By finding an emotional hook that draws viewers in, allowing them to overcome this initial reluctance and get involved with the storyline of the program or movie they’re watching.

For years, Hollywood screenwriters have known that the best emotional hooks are those that tap into our own peak emotions, specifically love, death, fear, drama, conflict and violence. All of these elicit an immediate emotional response from most people, gaining and sustaining our interest in the story being viewed, or the computer game being played.

It’s also what makes us care about the characters, or at least care enough to keep watching. That’s also the reason why these subjects make up such a disproportionate amount of all subjects covered in the media. And of all the movie genres regularly utilised by Hollywood, it’s the ‘action’ movies, with the multitude of violence and killing they display, that rake in the big bucks.

Action films draw us in and the money they make draws Hollywood in.

The video/computer game industry is no different. Do they have a vast array of games on the market that don’t involve violence? Yes, but it’s the violent games that sell quickest and, for users of these games, it’s the violent ones that keep them interested in competing and upgrading when new versions of existing games are released.

It’s also worth considering the argument that violent media allows people to let off steam in a society where there are precious few outlets for natural aggression. It used to be that some people punched boxing bags to physically let off steam, now we use computer games instead, or lose ourselves in films where the ‘baddies’ get what they deserve and we can all feel good about bad things happening to bad fictional characters.

These emotions, and the need to vent them, exist in the human species and are not the result of media moguls turning us into aggressive monsters – it’s actually part of our animal nature and we’re all born with some degree of natural aggression.

However, the line between letting off steam and inciting violence is a very fine one, meaning that what an adult may be able to use as a healthy outlet for aggression, in the developing mind of a child, may become the training platform for increased aggression on their part.

In the end, it’s important to realise that there’s a market for violence, one each of us carries some responsibility in perpetuating. If we don’t want as much violent media then, as consumers, we must shy away from it, making it a less profitability market.

When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in the horrific Paris car crash years ago, many people felt the collective guilt of knowing her life was made hell by media intrusions into her privacy, all because we, as consumers, eagerly bought the magazines carrying her photos. No matter how coarse or intrusive a photo of Diana was, editors, publishers and the rest of us clambered to see the shots and, in the process, ensured that photographers were well rewarded for their intrusive efforts.

In a sense, the violent media stakes are the same. Even if we’re philosophically opposed to the level of violence now readily marketed on TV, at the movies and on video/computer games, the reality is we watch their violence, we buy their violence and we ensure a continuing trade in violence through our actions.

Ultimately, no industry can survive without customers and only when the customer-base for violence becomes less profitable will we see the entertainment industry focus on changing the level of violence it sells.

However, there’s also a lot parents can do to diminish the harm caused by media violence.

While the experts may debate many issues surrounding violent imagery, almost all agree that the more parents communicate with their children about what they’re watching, the better off those children are.

This is because when children watch anything on TV, or other media, their inexperience of life gives them no frame of reference with which to understand the information they receive. This in turn leads children to draw their own conclusions about the things they see in the media, including the violence, murder, aggression and sadism that have become a regular part of our media culture.

For many children, the conclusions they reach are that violence is fun and funny, a good way of solving problems and a ‘normal’ way for people to relate to each other. The fact that they don’t necessarily see the same level of violence within our society doesn’t always register with our kids since their access to the world at large is limited by their age -- and they know that.

It’s also one of the reasons children rely so heavily on the media for information about what the world is really like.

However, when parents actually sit with their children and watch some of this violence, they have the opportunity to explain that it’s not real, that if someone actually hit another person that way they would die and that death is tragic, not funny. Parents can also explain that they don’t agree with treating people that way and that violence is bad, undesirable and not a ‘normal’ way to resolve conflict.

When parents make the effort to communicate this information with their kids, most children, particularly young children, learn to become critical viewers rather than passive ones. They also learn more quickly to differentiate between fantasy and reality, when it comes to media violence, and grow to understand what kind of behaviour is socially acceptable and productive.

Parents can also explain many of the special effects that filmmakers use to heighten emotion, such as music and other sound effects that increase viewers’ fear, giving their children the skills to understand why they feel a certain way when watching something scary.

When it comes to news items, or other ‘real’ violence, children are often frightened because they cannot discern for themselves that a school shooting in the US isn’t close to home or unlikely to occur to them. Parents can put these kinds of real life events into perspective, easing children’s fears and giving them the ability to use this knowledge to protect themselves from future fears arising from future news stories.

This is particularly important because while murder is the least often committed crime in our society, it is the most frequently reported crime in the media and one of the most frequently dramatised storylines for fictional programs.

Is it any wonder then that our kids, and the rest of us, end up believing murders happen all the time?

Opening the channels of communication is important but it’s also important not to use the opportunity to simply preach or dictate to your children about what they can and can’t watch, as this may stifle conversations about media content.

For instance, if your kids have secretly been viewing something they knew they weren’t supposed to, and they know you’ll reprimand them for it, they’re more likely to choose to suffer in silence rather than discuss the program with you. Needless to say, this compounds the problem because not only have they been exposed to material that is disturbing to them, the children also find themselves with no outlet for expressing their fears and concerns.

It’s also good to set time limits on TV watching and computer game play, as well as ensuring televisions, videos and computers are not isolated in children’s bedrooms, away from parental supervision.

That said, there’s also much that we can all do to change the media by encourage less production of violence, closer scrutiny of violent content and refocusing classification standards on the things that really do cause harm, rather than moral issues like sex.

It may be self-serving for an organisation that lobbies on behalf of the adult sex industry to suggest that violence needs to be more strictly monitored and controlled BUT IT’S ALSO TRUE.

For years, Eros has watched the OFLC and other government bodies and politicians totally highjack the censorship and classification debate so that the only thing people seem concerned about is sex in the media. In the end, sex is actually a natural bodily function that all normal adults will experience; the same cannot be said of violence.

Eros is not suggesting children be given wider access to sexual material at all. What we’re saying is that it’s time to really look at what kind of material is likely to harm and disturb children and reduce their access to that which harms. We also think it’s time the classification bodies focused more of their energy and resources classifying children’s entertainment, instead of increasing the censorship of adult material, marketed and sold to adults exclusively.

The reality is there must be something seriously wrong with the current censorship practices in this country if extensive research and evidence is blatantly ignored in favour of appeasing moral crusaders and others seeking to control material accessed by adults.

Eros Association believes it’s time to change the priorities of censorship and classification and we hope you agree.

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