Portugal’s left-wing Bloco de Esquerda is working towards getting the law changed on the times that bullfighting can be broadcast on television.
The party, led by Francisco Louçã, which has been campaigning against bullfighting in Portugal for years, says that the sport should only be shown on television after 10.30pm.
Now Television Law Nº 27/2007 could soon be altered to prohibit bullfighting and other violent programmes “susceptible to negatively influencing the behaviour and personalities of children and adolescents” from being shown on television between 6am and 10.30pm.
The party claims that many academic studies have consistently shown that the cruelty of bullfighting has a negative effect on children and adolescents.
In one such study, carried out in Spain for Madrid’s Department of Clinical Psychology, the behaviour of 240 Spanish children, aged between eight and 10 and from various socio-economic backgrounds, was studied.
Children shown videos of violent and bloody scenes during bullfights displayed higher levels of anxiety and aggressiveness than those who hadn’t in the controlled study.
The study also argues that bullfights increase child tolerance to such acts of violence and as a consequence their acceptance of aggressive behaviour.
In Portugal, an injunction was awarded against RTP – Radiotelevisão Portuguesa, by a Lisbon court in May 2008, to prevent the transmission of a particular bullfight scheduled to be shown on the public television channel at 5pm.
The Bloco de Esquerda admits that it is “not indifferent to the popularity of the sport in Portugal” but believes the law should be changed so that “such performances should only be broadcast after a 10.30pm watershed.”
The project law, which was published on March 25, will now have to go before a parliamentary committee for further discussion. C.G.
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