Washington — Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Friday that violent entertainment aimed at kids contributes to an "ethic of violence," and he urged the media to help steer young people to a safer path.
Commenting on Thursday's high school shooting near San Diego, the second in less than a month, Ashcroft said parents, school officials, law enforcement agencies, students and the media all need to promote a "culture of responsibility" that discourages children from lashing out with violence when they're angry or disenchanted.
He cited violent video games as part of the problem.
"The entertainment industry, with it's video games and the like, which sometimes literally teach shooting and all, we've got to ask ourselves how do we as a culture respond to be more responsible," Ashcroft said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"Even the news industry can report incidents like this in ways that maybe don't promote copycat replications," Ashcroft said on CBS' "The Early Show."
Lawmakers have scolded video game makers for marketing violent games to children. Mindy Tucker, Ashcroft's spokeswoman, said the attorney general recently saw a clip of a video game in which players take on the roles of drug dealers shooting at police.
She said he wasn't singling out specific industries, though and believes that everyone has a responsibility to discourage violence in American culture.
Doug Lowenstein, president of the Interactive Digital Software Assn., a video game maker group, said the industry shares Ashcroft's concern about youth violence.
But he pointed to a U.S. Surgeon General report issued earlier this year that concluded the impact of video games on violent behavior has yet to be determined and offered no support for theories that video games train people to shoot.
On his round of morning talk shows, Ashcroft was asked whether the government should do more to curtail kids' access to guns, as guns in recent shootings in California came from students' homes.
Ashcroft said there is money in President Bush's budget for trigger locks and to help communities put police officers in schools.
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