Fredric Wertham's book The Seduction of the Innocent was based on the notion that some kids were reading crime-oriented comics and, you know, committing crimes, so surely the comics caused the kids to go astray. Wertham's writing only vaguely touches on the idea of any other causative agent, such as upbringing or developmental issues - hand-waving them away while placing blame squarely on comics. He also doesn't account for the large number of kids who read the same comics but did not commit crimes, because that's not a good fit for a sensationalist book.
So when the Kefauver Hearings turned to investigate juvenile delinquency, Wertham was there to give testimony and blame comics, and in short the comics industry, in an effort to avoid government interference, clenched itself into establishing the Comics Code Authority, essentially a badge that declared that any comic with the CCA logo on its cover was made to "wholesome", non-kid-warping standards that a parent could trust. The dirty underside of that was that comics that did not take on the badge suddenly found distributors unwilling to move non-Code comics, and publishers that did not pivot to the CCA tended to go out of business. EC Comics was the most notable company, known for its crime, horror and other hard-boiled comics, that refused to bend, and ultimately only one of its titles survived, a humor comic called Mad, which transitioned into a magazine instead of a comic, to be sold alongside Time and Newsweek.
Meanwhile, for the life of the Comics Code, comics became reduced to supposedly harmless fare, funny animal books, combat with no blood, one-sided morality superhero stories where Good Always Wins. Comics had a reputation as "stupid stuff for kids" for decades due to this sanitization. Did crime decrease among kids? What do you think?
None of the people wringing their hands over crime comics ever considered the possibility that they'd gotten the cause and effect backwards. For most kids these things were simply vicarious thrills, and if it was more than that to some kids, it was likely that those kids already were set down the wrong path long before they got hold of any comics.
I believe this is true among all media. I believe that the risk of any work to actually change someone, be it music or TV or even porn, is minimal to most folks. Rather, people with bad ideas or unpleasant desires will seek out material that resonates with them. Unfortunately, many moral busybodies insist on attacking the problem from the wrong direction, thinking that if we can somehow just erase all the icky bad media, it will make the world a paradise simply by not ever giving anyone any "bad ideas".
And that's not ever going to happen. Not that they won't try!
