VIOLENCE in films and television programmes is encouraging young people to take up a life of crime, according to the powerful Fight Crime Committee. The committee told film-makers and broadcasters that they have a ''moral responsibility in promoting a righteous moral standing'', member Mr Justein Wong Chun said. The allegations, in the committee's 1992 annual report published yesterday, were rejected as ridiculous by a film industry representative and unrealistic by a TVB programmer. TVB's Mr Leung Yip-cheong said that while the station was aware of its influence, its main aim was to entertain. ''Watching TV is not like going to a sermon. Television is not a responsible, educating babysitter,'' he said. The chief executive of the Motion Picture Industry Association, Mr Tsi Ka-kei, said the industry was also aware it had a responsibility, but films were never made with the intention of glorifying triad activities or violence. ''We don't believe that juvenile delinquency has something to do with the films young people see. It's ridiculous to us,'' he said. According to Mr Wong, TV and cinema had a ''moral responsibility to give the right message''. Mr Tsi, however, said many such films were already being made. ''We have a lot of film-makers in Hongkong prepared to go bankrupt making educational films, but many of them never reach their target audience because they are given a category III rating,'' he said. The award-winning film Gangs was targeted at young high school children and depicted gangs and violence as stupid but because of the violence it was restricted to audiences over 18. ''I believe that as long as we don't have a good ending to these sort of films, we are fulfilling our moral obligation,'' said Mr Tsi. ''In fact we make the bad guys as irritating as possible - I can't believe anybody would actually want to imitate them.'' Both Mr Leung and Mr Tsi questioned how many films and how much television committee members had watched. ''FCC members in the meeting said, 'I don't watch television that much, but I think . . .'.'' ''I think they should do some research and spend some time watching TV,'' Mr Leung said. Committee recommendations for a more socially conscious media are the result of a study into juvenile crime. The committee found that juvenile offenders accounted for 16 per cent of the total number of arrests last year.
