Youths not convinced by anti-violence ads.

Cable television's anti-violence public service announcements frequently fail because many adolescent viewers see them as being delivered by hypocritical, violence-prone spokespersons. They also think the announcements offer unrealistic or no solutions to violence, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study revealed. The researchers found adolescent audiences to be sophisticated viewers, quick to criticize public service messages they perceived as being either unrealistic or hypocritical.

"The cable television industry created public service announcements and special programming that aired [in March, 1995! during an intense effort celled `voices Against Violence,'" indicates Jane D. Brown, professor of journalism and mass communication. "We created an archive of many of those PSAs and selected a systematic sample of 15 to test on target audiences."

The PSAs played on MTV, HBO, the Cartoon Network, and other cable networks."Some of the public service announcements included celebrities such as Samuel Jackson, who was in the graphically violent movie `Pulp Fiction.' The kids we studied said, `How could this guy be asking us to stop the violence when he has portrayed extremely violent people in the movies he acts in?' Some also didn't believe the messages of celebrities like Derrick Coleman, a basketball player known for fighting and rough play." On the other hand, some celebrities, like rap artist Chuck...