By Jay Mathews, Washington Post staff

April 1995 – The New York City police officer who persuaded the toy industry to  begin  moving  against  realistic  toy  guns  has launched an even more ambitious campaign against two icons of American culture: violence and MTV.

James  E. Davis, who used public embarrassment earlier this year to spark a corporate  chain reaction against selling toy assault weapons to children, has begun a similar series of news conferences and letter-writing campaigns to  persuade  MTV to show what he calls violent videos only between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

MTV executives compliment Davis on his toy campaign but say they are not playing  many  of  the  videos  Davis  identifies  and  have standards that prohibit violent videos. They suggest that Davis may be confusing them with other  video  networks  and  point  to  their  extensive “Enough Is Enough” campaign designed to curb violence that affects young people.

MTV’s  response  has  not deterred Davis, a 32-year-old former patrolman who  operates  with  no  organizational  support. In a letter to McDonald’s Corp.,  which  is  at  the  top  of  the  list  of MTV advertisers Davis is targeting,  he  said:  “I  am willing to boycott Mickey D’s (McDonald’s) if they  continue  to  support  MTV,  who  is  destroying  the  minds of young Americans.  ‘Ronald  McDonald’  and  all advertisers on MTV are guilty, and have the blood of America’s youth on their hands.”

A  survey  by  the  Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs found  90  violent scenes on MTV music videos during an 18-hour period this April, compared with 121 during a similar period in 1992. Research director Dan Amundson said there was a substantial decline in scenes with weapons or serious  assaults,  from  51 to nine. He attributed this to MTV’s increased sensitivity to the issue.

Davis’s  attack  on MTV videos comes at a time of feverish congressional and network activity on the violence issue, with the cable and broadcasting industries setting up programs to monitor simulated bloodshed on television and   perhaps  limit  it  in  some  undetermined  way.  Artists  and  child psychologists  disagree  over  the alleged harm from violent images in film and  music.  Although  the  videos Davis targets are tame compared with the violence  in  films  shown  on  some  cable channels, young people are more likely to see and hear the videos repeatedly.

MTV  spokeswoman  Carole  Robinson said the videos Davis abhors, such as the Snoop Doggy Dogg hit “Murder Was the Case,” do not glorify or celebrate violence.  “We  think  he  is  very misinformed about our programming,” she said.

Replies Davis: “MTV is playing violent images throughout the day.”

In  “Murder  Was the Case,” there are what appear to be two stabbings in prison,  and an ambulance is upended. The lyrics include: “Late at night, I hear  toothbrushes scraping the floor, niggers getting their shanks just in case  of  a  war.”  At MTV’s insistence, the record company has deleted the word “niggers” and portions of the killing scenes from the MTV version.

Other  MTV  videos  shown on a recent Saturday afternoon included Warren G’s  “Regulate,”  which shows a mugging; Cracker’s “Low,” in which a female boxer  punches  out  a man; and the Cranberries’ “Zombie,” which portrays a child  being shot in what appears to be Northern Ireland. Robinson said MTV occasionally  shows an edited version of another video Davis does not like, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube’s “Natural Born Killaz,” but only after midnight.

MTV  executives  say  Davis  has  grossly  distorted the nature of their programming  and  has falsely accused them of airing some videos, including “Throw  Ya  Guns  in  the  Air”  by  Onyx,  that they have never shown. The executives  say they were so concerned by one of their own surveys, showing 45%  of  their young audience personally affected by violence, that they launched their “Enough Is Enough” campaign.

An  MTV  statement  said the campaign includes “special programming, MTV News  coverage,  public service announcements, local market activities, and events with artists, political and community leaders.”

Robinson said some MTV executives met with Davis to discuss his concerns before  he  began his campaign but have not been in contact with him since. Security  guards escorted Davis out of MTV offices on Broadway here when he sought an unscheduled appointment with network executives in October.

Retailers also rejected Davis’s initial campaign against toy guns, which eventually  gained  momentum  with  media  coverage  of  his complaint that business was feeding off inner-city misery.

“Black  inner-city  kids  don’t  see themselves much on the media,” said Davis,  a  former beat patrolman who now teaches at the police academy. “So now  when  we  have a media that shows us, what are we doing? We’re holding guns up in the air.”

Davis  said  he  grew  up  with  an  appreciation  of  the violence that accompanies  life in many parts of New York City, and said that when he was younger  welcomed  the  rap artists “as a positive vehicle, it was fun. But now they have taken it to another level.”

Despite  MTV’s  denial  of  wrongdoing, some of the advertisers Davis is trying  to  reach  are  taking  his  complaint  seriously.  MTV advertisers targeted  by  Davis  said  they did not approve of violent programming, but often  do  not control exactly where their commercials are placed. “We air more  than  300,000  commercials  on  cable TV a year,” said Greg Rossiter, spokesman  for  Procter  &  Gamble  Co.,  “so  it is not possible for us to determine where every single one of those commercials goes.”

“We  don’t  have  creative  authority  over  MTV,”  said  Bob Bertini, a spokesman  for  Coca-Cola  Co.,  “but  we  do  not place ads on certain MTV programs  that  we do not feel are appropriate.” A spokesman for Ford Motor Co.  said,  “We  do  not  place  any advertising with programs of a violent nature.”

Dave  Fogelson, public relations director for Reebok International Ltd., called  Davis’s accusations “a very serious and important issue.” He added, “The  nature of the videos on MTV is not an issue that we as a company have discussed or looked at.”

He  said the popular music cable channel “is probably the most important advertising medium that is available to us.” The athletic-wear company buys MTV  time  under  a system that allows the network to place the ads. “We do not have the option to say when our commercials will run,” he said.

A  spokeswoman  for Microsoft Corp. said some of its ads are placed on a “run-of-the-station”  basis  that  scatters  them  among  several videos, a practice that the computer software giant does not believe violates company guidelines “that steer us away from major sex and violence.”

McDonald’s,  which  Davis  believes  is the advertiser most likely to be sensitive  to  an argument about children, did not respond to a request for comment.

The toy chains “did not take me seriously at first,” Davis said, “but we turned things around.” If the MTV advertisers do not cooperate, he said, “I am  going  to  use  boycotts.  I  am  going  to show Ronald McDonald with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a machine gun.”