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(Cowan 73). As Geoffrey Cowan

summarizes in See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and

Violence in Television, the Surgeon General's committee found:

1. a preliminary and tentative conclusion of a causal

relationship between viewing violence and aggressive behavior;

2. an indication that any such causal relation operates only on some children (who are predisposed to be aggressive); and

3. an indication that it operates only in some

The report's language sounded so tentative that early newspaper articles vindicated television. As Robert M. Liebert and Joyce Sprafkin recount in The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth, a summary of the findings was published by Jack Gould in The New York Times on January 11, 1972, under the headline: "TV Violence Held Unharmful To Youth" (108).

This headline did not present the whole picture, however. The Surgeon General, Dr. Jesse Steinfeld, refused to couch his interpretation of the findings in the language of the study committee:

While the committee report is carefully phrased and qualified in language acceptable to social scientists, it is clear to me that the causal relationship between televised violence and antisocial behavior is sufficient to warrant appropriate and immediate action. (Cowan 74)

When the 12person committee was selected (and given the name, "The Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior")

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