Trigger Warning:
Gun Guidelines for the Media
Created by Hollywood, Health & Society to help TV and film creatives better understand the depiction of gun use in entertainment,  and drawing on research in our Media Impact Project's Shooting Straight report, this new guide offers ways to model safer use of firearms.
Evidence for Audience Impact
The latest report from the Media Impact Project synthesizes decades of research on the social impact of entertainment (with a focus on scripted television and film) to distill best practices for those harnessing narrative for social change. This research was conducted with support from the California Health Care Foundation.

Are You Stuck in a Depression Loop?
Hollywood, Health & Society’s latest video, produced with the help of Life Noggin, looks at what the depression cycle is and how to break free.

IJPC Hits Major Milestone!
Lear Center HQ at USC’s Kerckhoff Hall is now home to the physical archives of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture project, directed by USC Annenberg Professor Joe Saltzman. The collection includes more than 35,000 videos, more than 5,000 hours of audio programs and more than 8,500 novels, plays, poems, scripts, artwork and other artifacts. This month, the IJPC also reached another major milestone: cataloging 99,000 items in its online database.
Lear Center in the News
  • Professor Joe Saltzman was quoted in the Los Angeles Times on the growing tension between the Los Angeles Police Department and the local press over coverage of a botched bomb diffusion that destroyed a South LA neighborhood.

  • Director of Research Erica Rosenthal shared some new findings from our ongoing study on climate change in unscripted/reality TV with NPR.

  • ATX TV's TV Campfire Podcast featured our Hollywood, Health & Society panel discussing the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence, and AI's impact on the television industry.

  • Lear Center Director Marty Kaplan is quoted in the Financial Times on CNN's disastrous Trump town hall. From the article: "...Critics have attacked CNN for the composition of the largely Republican or Republican-leaning audience, saying it sometimes felt like one of Trump’s combative rallies. 'CNN did not have to have an audience, and they did not have to do it live,' said Marty Kaplan, a professor of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. 'In no way could CNN have expected anything different from that set-up than what they got.'... Kaplan says CNN may be seeking to reach some 'persuadable' Fox viewers to increase its ratings, but he said this could be a 'foolish' mission given the partisan divides in the US..."