House Subcommittee Schedules One-Sided Oversight Hearing on Media Violence Next Week

On March 19 the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee will hold an oversight hearing on the National Science Foundation and Youth Violence Research report. You may recall back in February that this same subcommittee headed up by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) released a report from the NSF advisory committee (PDF) about Youth Violence that identified violence media as one of three major risk factors in mass shootings. One of the advisors that contributed to that report was Professor Brad Bushman, whose research is almost always skewed towards finding a link between media consumption and real world violence.

Unfortunately Chairman Wolf is trying to make this hearing as one -sided as he possibly can. The hearing will have two panels and two witnesses - both who will present evidence that violent media has some sort of connection to real-world violent acts. Wolf is handling this hearing the way other lawmakers tried to handle SOPA and PIPA; by presenting only one perspective. Clearly there's mountains of research that disputes Bushman's claim that video games and other media are a bad influence on America's youth. Here's the Witness list:

Witnesses
 Panel 1:
 The Honorable Subra Suresh
 Director
 National Science Foundation

Panel 2:
 Dr. Brad J. Bushman
 Professor
 Ohio State University
 Youth Violence Research

So who else is on this subcommittee? Here's a list:

Republicans
•Frank Wolf, Virginia, Chairman
•John Culberson, Texas
•Robert Aderholt, Alabama
•Jo Bonner, Alabama
•Tom Graves, Georgia
•Tom Rooney, Florida
•Andy Harris, MD, Maryland

Democrats
•Chaka Fattah, Pennsylvania, Ranking Member
•Adam Schiff, California
•Mike Honda, California
•José Serrano, New York

You can let Rep. Wolf know your opinions on this one-sided hearing he has planned for next week by dropping him a note via his Congressional page contact form, on Twitter and on his Facebook page. You can also let him and other subcommittee members know that there should be a third or fourth panel featuring experts that have contrary opinions to Brad Bushman's.

Source: BroadcastingCable. Thanks to BearDogg-X for the tip.