Virginia shooting restarts media blame game

By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In the rush to explain massacres like the one at Virginia Tech, experts including popular TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw dusted off a familiar scapegoat -- violent video games, movies and other media.

"The mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose," McGraw said on CNN's Larry King Live.

"Common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, (or where) it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society.

"You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high."

But even critics of violent media caution against looking for a single point of blame.

"Extreme acts of violence almost never occur in the absence of multiple risk factors," said Iowa State University psychology professor Craig Anderson, who recently collaborated on "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents," which asserts that a steady diet of violent games and other media increase the risk for aggressive and violent behavior.

Co-author Doug Gentile said no researcher in the field thinks violence in video games, movies and popular music alone is to blame.

"If they took them away, would it have lowered the risk? It would have. Who knows if it would have prevented it?" he said.