Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl 1993

The Super Bowl is one of the most widely viewed television events every year. Unfortunately, many women’s shelters report that Super Bowl Sunday is also one of the worst days of the year for violence against women in the home. At the request of FAIR’s Women’s Desk and other advocates for women, NBC Sports aired a public service announcement (PSA) on domestic violence during the network’s coverage of this year’s Super Bowl.

For too many households, the violence of football’s most-watched game is not confined to the TV screen. The Super Bowl brings together many activities that may “trigger” a man predisposed to battering: intense viewing of sanctioned violence, heavy drinking, betting. Many women’s shelters report big increases in calls for help on Super Bowl day. Some shelters say they double their staff to prepare for the influx.

The link between football and domestic violence was pointed out by Laura Fraser six years ago in Mother Jones (1/87), followed by sports columnist Robert Lipsyte (NBC Nightly News, 1/18/87). In 1990, Mike Capuzzo of the Philadelphia Inquirer (12/7/90) examined the connection between viewing violent sports—football, basketball, hockey—and battering. He discovered that about 25 percent of the men seeking counseling to stop beating their wives had been violent after viewing sports.

Domestic violence is not limited to Super Bowl Sunday. According to the FBI, a battering incident occurs every 18 seconds in the US, and 30 percent of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. In October 1992, the Senate Judiciary Committee found that at least 1.1 million assaults against women in the home were reported in 1991. By some estimates, as many as 3 million more such crimes go unreported each year.

To the men who’ve run Washington and the national media in recent years, the crisis in American homes is drugs. “If this is a war,” declared NBC’s Tom Brokaw on the subject of drugs, “we’re all soldiers.” Like good soldiers, national media have marshaled their considerable resources against illegal drugs. A National Newspaper Index search revealed that for every article on domestic violence in leading dailies, there are eight on drugs. For every report on prevention of battering, there are 22 on prevention of drug abuse. From national media, one wouldn’t know that more Americans die from beatings in the home than from cocaine and crack.

In 1992, CBS took advantage of the massive Super Bowl audience by showing graphic anti-drug PSAs. This year, FAIR asked NBC to air a dramatic PSA on violence against women. FAIR’s new Women’s Desk approached NBC Sports in December. National women’s organizations, several men’s groups and individuals such as Susan Faludi, Susan Sarandon and Julianne Malveaux signed on to FAIR’s initiative.

FAIR’s request resulted in media outlets nationwide making domestic violence part of the Super Bowl coverage. While some news outlets went out of their way to attempt to deny a connection between football and domestic violence, relying on selective use of information and distorted quotes, most news outlets used the Super Bowl ad as an opportunity to discuss domestic violence as a threat to women all year long.

The anti-battering message on TV may well “save lives,” says Lenore Walker, a Denver psychologist who has written two books on domestic violence. “When people view violence, they can become inured. It becomes easier for them to commit it,” Walker observes. “The answer is not to ban TV violence, but to talk about it, bring it into the open, to diffuse the connection between seeing violence and acting it out.”

The Super Bowl offered an excellent opportunity for NBC to address this issue; FAIR has called on media professionals at all outlets to begin confronting domestic violence as a critical issue, not only on “Super Sunday,” but all year round.