After 50 years, here's why this pioneering TV program is more relevant than ever

Fifty years ago today, in a TV station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a Presbyterian minister turned puppeteer named Fred Rogers launched a new program for children: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. 

I’ll never forget coming home from school each day in the 1970s and watching the show. I felt like Mister Rogers was talking directly to me: A sensitive and inquisitive boy trying to make sense of the world (and taking a much-needed break after an activity-filled day at school).

"The world is not always a kind place," Fred Rogers once said. "That’s something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand."

(Watch the very first episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on YouTube):

The New York Times noted that, among his dozens of awards for excellence and public service, he won four daytime Emmys as a writer or performer between 1979 and 1999, as well as the lifetime achievement award of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1997. In 2002, President George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

While he stopped producing new episodes back in 2001—and even after he passed away in 2003—Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has been aired continuously on TV. Today, Mr. Rogers and his eponymous TV program are considered icons in American children's entertainment and education. Last month, Tom Hanks was signed on to star as Fred Rogers in a biopic based on a profile that appeared in the November 1998 issue of Esquire magazine. Next month, the US Postal Service will print a series of Mister Rogers stamps.

It’s hard to imagine that the program was actually nearly cancelled soon after it got off the ground. On May 1, 1969, just a year after his program went on the air, Fred Rogers appeared in Washington before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications to express his disagreement with a proposal by President Richard Nixon to cut federal funding for public broadcasting from $20 million to $10 million.

In moving testimony, Rogers cited the violence that was so prevalent in the children’s programming, and how the sort of programming he offered was a counterbalance to that. Rogers detailed the emotional impact that television had on children and how the medium could be used to provide a guiding influence to them. He said that his program’s entire budget of $6,000 was equal to the cost of “less than two minutes of cartoons,” referred to by Rogers as “animated...bombardment.” 

In his remarkable and passionately argued testimony, Rogers persuaded the gruff chairman of the subcommittee, Senator John O. Pastore, to maintain funding for public television at $20 million. 

(I highly recommend watching Fred Rogers’ moving Congressional testimony on YouTube here):

Budget cuts…again

Fast forward to today: It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the Trump administration is planning to do the same thing that the Nixon Administration attempted to do back in 1969. As Peggy McGlone reported last week in The Washington Post, the 2019 budget proposal submitted by the administration to Congress calls for the elimination of four federal cultural agencies that would save $1 billion from a $4.4 trillion spending plan.

The Trump administration’s proposal calls for drastically reducing the funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The four agencies would share just $109 million in 2019, an overall cut of $917 million, according to the Post.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would receive just $15 million, a cut of $480 million from 2017’s figure. The proposal would destroy the agency that supports public television and radio, CPB president and chief executive Patricia Harrison told the Post.

Last week’s budget proposal is in fact the Trump administration’s second attempt to eliminate funding for the federal agencies that provide crucial funding and production support to the creative arts in America. Last year, the administration made a similar proposal which was fortunately rejected by Congress. Will Congress decide once again to reject the administration’s proposal to slash federal funding for the arts?

The CPB is what brought Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to me as a young boy growing up in South Florida—and to millions of other children around the world. It was—and still is—a lone voice in an endless stream of violent programming that young kids and teens are exposed to on a nearly daily basis. Eliminating the type of programming that the CPB supports through critical funding—like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—would be a travesty, especially for a nation that is currently reeling from a multi-year series of senseless shootings that have taken the lives of so many innocent people.

The link between virtual violence and real violence

Since last week’s horrific tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, which saw 17 people—14 of whom were just children—murdered in cold blood, the call for stricter gun control laws has been brought once again to the fore. This time, the call to action is being bravely and passionately led by the students who witnessed and survived this nightmare. 

Yet, while the debate around gun control gains steam—one issue that has received virtually no attention during this massive media storm is the role of media—television, movies, the internet, and video games—in exposing children and adolescents to a non-stop stream of violent images, and the impact on their psychological health.

According to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics published in November 2009, American children are exposed to excessive amounts of violence through the television programs, movies, and video games they consume. By 18 years of age, the average young person will have viewed an estimated 200,000 acts of violence on television alone. “The highest proportion of violence was found in children’s shows. Of all animated feature films produced in the United States between 1937 and 1999, 100% portrayed violence, and the amount of violence with intent to injure has increased through the years.” The report also highlights the excessive exposure of young children and adolescents to violence on the internet and in video games. 

The AAP report cites numerous scientific studies and the nearly unanimous consensus among pediatricians that confirm the existence of a direct link between the violence that children are exposed to by different forms of media and aggressive and violent behavior:

In 2003, a panel of media-violence experts convened by the National Institute of Mental Health, at the request of the US Surgeon General, published its comprehensive report on the effects of media violence on youth, which revealed media violence to be a significant causal factor in aggression and violence…The weight of scientific evidence has been convincing to pediatricians, with more than 98% of pediatricians in one study expressing the personal belief that media violence affects children’s aggression.

Let’s save programming like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

The perpetual feet-dragging on the part of Congress and the current administration in enacting laws that will make it harder for disturbed young men like Nikolas Cruz to obtain military-caliber assault rifles like the AR-15, which he used to destroy innocent lives last week, is shameful and inexcusable. The renewed movement to enact stricter gun laws is a welcome step forward after years of government inaction.

But while we focus our attention once again on gun control, let’s not lose sight of another factor behind the violence that is gripping our country, a factor that has been scientifically proven in multiple studies over the course of the past several decades. That factor is the clear linkage between exposure to violence in all forms of media, and aggressive and violent behavior in the real world. 

The proposal by the Trump administration to eliminate the key federal institutions that support programs like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—to name just one example—is a misguided, ill-informed move that, if passed by Congress, will remove a source of quality, non-violent, children-friendly programming our society needs now more than ever before.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts and suggestions on this issue in the comments.

Note: The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer.