The House Subcommittee and parents of the United States in the 1950s were concerned about how certain types of mass communication media contributed to the rise in juvenile delinquency. Specifically, they were concerned with “crime and horror” comic books, the radio, television, and motion pictures as this forms of entertainment often included acts like murder, robbery, rape, and other activities that were greatly frowned upon in society. Since comic books in particular show this acts in extreme detail and shown to children and teens, parents often expressed their concern for the possible deleterious effects upon these forms of entertainment, which could potentially lead to juvenile delinquency, to the House Subcommittee. The radio, television, …show more content…
They believed that the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press was a hard-fought freedom that shouldn’t be abrogated and by taking these freedoms means rejecting the, “basic American concepts of a free press operating in a free land for a free people” (Milestone Documents 3). They also didn’t want to repeat Canada’s mistake, where they, “passed a law making it an offense to print, publish, or sell a crime comic” (Milestone Documents 3). While this law did decrease the number of crime comics, it also lead to the increase of love, sex, and girlie magazines that prompted a special committee to analyze the sale and distribution of obscene literature. In the end, the Subcommittee decided that parents are responsible for what their children decide to read and that civic organizations need to call to the parent’s attention where certain reading materials they offer that fall below the American standard of decency of acts such as crime, horror, sadism, etc. The comic book industry is largely responsible for the comic books placed on newsstands and has to make sure that the comics are clean, decent, and fit to be read by children. The industry had to raise the standard for their products in order to meet adequate standards of decency and good