President Clinton has strongly backed a US Government report criticising the entertainment industry for marketing violent entertainment products to children.

President Clinton has strongly backed a US Government report criticising the entertainment industry for marketing violent entertainment products to children. The report was ordered by Mr Clinton after the shooting dead last year of 13 teenagers by two of their fellow students at the Columbine High School in Colorado. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report says products rated suitable for adults are frequently advertised in magazines and television programmes aimed at children. It calls for an improvement in the self-regulated ratings system used by the film, music and games industries. The film and video-game industries have voluntary age-based ratings while the music industry has a general label warning of adult or explicit content. President Clinton, who has frequently expressed concern about violence in entertainment, urged the industries to halt the practices on their own. "We've known now for 30 years through some 300 studies... that regular, persistent exposure of children at young ages to indiscriminate violence tends to make them less sensitive to the real and human impact of violence in their own lives," he said, speaking after the report's release.