Crime and Local Television News

Dramatic, Breaking, and Live From the Scene

Jeremy H. Lipschultz, Michael L. Hilt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135657109
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

This volume offers an analysis of crime coverage on local television, exploring the nature of local television news and the ongoing appeal of crime stories. Drawing on the perspectives of media studies, psychology, sociology, and criminology, authors Jeremy H. Lipschultz and Michael L. Hilt focus on live local television coverage of crime and examine its irresistibility to viewers and its impact on society's perceptions of itself. They place local television news in its theoretical and historical contexts, and consider it through the lens of legal, ethical, racial, aging, and technological concerns. In its comprehensive examination of how local television newsrooms around the country address coverage of crime, this compelling work discusses such controversial issues as the use of crime coverage to build ratings, and considers new models for reform of local TV newscasts. The volume includes national survey data from news managers and content analyses from late night newscasts in a range of markets, and integrates the theory and practice of local television news into the discussion. Lipschultz and Hilt also project the future of local television news and predict the impact of social and technological changes on news. As a provocative look at the factors and forces shaping local news and crime coverage, Crime and Local Television News makes an important contribution to the discussions taking place in broadcast journalism, mass communication, media and society, and theory and research courses. It will also interest all who consider the impact of local news content and coverage.

1

Introduction to Local Television News

“What do they get, the viewers who watch at 11 p.m.? They get local (news) ‘with extreme prejudice,’ to quote the old CIA term for authority to wipe out enemies. They get what Max Frankel of The New York Times calls ‘body bags at 11 o’clock, normally 30 minutes of hell and blather, ads and promos, local television’s most profitable and most disheartening use of the air.’”

—Robert MacNeil,
former PBS news anchor (1996, p. 7)

“Every day the particulars of television news—the news stories—are different, but the tone and feel of the newscast remains the same.”

—Matthew R. Kerbel,
former producer and professor (2000, p. 130)

Viewers of local television newscasts across the country are regularly exposed to crime news stories. In this book, crime coverage is studied with an interest in how live reporting appeals to the desire to be dramatic and timely. For about 3 decades, crime stories within local TV newscasts have been nearly as common as weather and sports. Although marketing is a factor in the format of local TV news, it is also clear that news values and organizational structure drive a news culture that favors an emphasis on crime coverage.

Television in general, and local TV news in particular, are a part of everyday life. According to a recent Roper survey, 56% of Americans consider television to be their primary source for news (Roper Center, 1999b). Respondents who said they got most of their news about national and international issues from television identified three dominant sources: cable, local, and network TV news. Surprisingly, 39% said they turned to local TV news for national and international stories, second only to cable news (Roper Center, 1999a). However, only 16% say local TV news is doing the best job of covering the news, behind cable and network TV (Roper Center, 1999c).

The criticism of local TV news has not turned viewers away from it. Local TV news is, of course, a local production that emphasizes what newsrooms perceive as interesting for themselves and their viewers. So-called “hard news” emphasizes “ongoing” events during the past day, and crime stories fit this model (Jamieson & Campbell, 2001, pp. 40–41). Violent crimes such as murders, robberies, and rapes

• Are definable events between individuals.
• Are dramatic, conflict-filled, and intense.
• Disrupt order and threaten the community.
• Are short, simple, and verifiable stories.
• Are visual and may be easily videotaped (p. 41).

Jamieson and Campbell (2001) reduce the crime story to five characteristics: (a) personalized through perpetrators and victims; (b) dramatic, conflict-filled, controversial, and violent; (c) actual and concrete; (d) novel or deviant; and (e) linked to issues of ongoing concern to media (p. 41).

The emphasis on breaking news, live shots, and sensational video tends to place a premium on crime reporting (Westin, 2000). For example, one 1993 to 94 study examined how KABC–TV, Los Angeles, covered crime and found that the station had an average of three crime stories per day (Gilliam, Jr., Iyengar, Simon, & Wright, 1996):

The high level of violence was as expected: The overwhelming majority of news reports were episodic in nature and featured acts of violent crime…. Violent crime made up 30 percent of all crimes in Los Angeles County but was the focus of 78 percent of the news reports aired by KABC. (pp. 9–10)

Public opinion polls consistently find that a majority of Americans worry that crime is getting worse (Gallup Poll, 2000). Network television newscasts’ coverage of murders increased by about 600%, although the national murder rate dropped by 20% between 1990 and 1998 (Westfeldt & Wicker, 1998), and the violent crime rate dropped by a record 10.4% in 1999 (Associated Press, 2000). No data exist for comparing local television news coverage of crime and local crime rates.

This book is about how and why local television news covers crime. Crime is considered “the most common and least studied staple of news” (Dennis & LaMay, 1992, p. xi). For more than 40 years, the Gallup Poll has found that Americans identify crime as either the first or second problem facing their local community. In the 2000 poll, 27% mentioned crime (including drugs, guns, and gangs) as “the worst problem” (Gallup Poll, 2000). If you turn on the local television newscast tonight, it is very likely that there will be at least one crime story. In fact, one study of the three dominant network affiliated stations in Chicago found that as much as 9 of the 14 minutes devoted to news “concerned the threat of violence to humans” (Entman, 1994b, p. 31). The coverage of crime is an everyday occurrence in local television newsrooms. Crimes such as murder, although not the most frequent form of crime, get the most attention because of their seriousness. Entman (1994b) offered the example of the murder of a child, allegedly by her mother, and a station’s placing of the story in a “drug infested neighborhood” (p. 34). Local television news is seen as encoded to portray crime within a racial and economic context. By emphasizing crime in economically depressed neighborhoods, local newsrooms may reinforce stereotypes about minorities (Heider, 2000).

Although all of us have personal experiences as viewers, most of us do not pause to critically examine what we watch. This chapter provides an overview of local television news and the key concepts required for understanding it. We begin with the long-known view that

Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth’s surface, moves in a small circle … our opinions cover a bigger space…. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine (Lippmann, 1922, 1965, p. 53).

The Nature of Local TV News

Local television news is based on decisions made in newsrooms about what is newsworthy. “Although long overshadowed by the national media, local news has always played an important role in the way a city and region understands its problems, its opportunities, and its sense of local identity” (Kaniss, 1991, p. 2). News has typically been defined by criteria such as proximity, prominence, timeliness, impact, magnitude, conflict, and oddity (Ryan & Tankard, 1977, pp. 105–109). Not everyone agrees about the list. McManus (1994) included the following: timeliness, proximity, consequence, human interest, prominence, unusualness, conflict, visual quality, amusement, and topicality (pp. 119–120). Often, news is dominated by “known” as opposed to “unknown” people (Gans, 1979, p. 9). When officials and politicians are not the principal sources of stories, the unknown sources often are victims: “… Unknowns are victims of natural or social disorders, most often of crime, and on television, of tornadoes, floods, fires, plane accidents, and other natural or technological disasters” (Gans, p. 14). News selection involves “frames” for stories and use of a few newsworthy items from many choices (Tuchman, 1978). The metaphor of a “news net” being cast by editors offers one explanation:

But a net has holes. Its haul is dependent upon the amount invested in intersecting fiber and the tensile strength of that fiber. The narrower the intersections between the mesh—the more blanket-like the net—the more can be captured…. Today’s news net is intended for big fish. (p. 21)

The 2000 RTNDA convention in Minneapolis, MN, was the site for a blistering attack on television news. The meeting of news directors featured a keynote speech by Cable News Network correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

… All of us in this room share in this most ludicrous state of affairs. So much so that I recently carefully clipped a New York Times cutting and just about slept with it under my pillow…. WBBM–TV in Chicago is going back to basic journalism! A rare example of dog bites man actually being news!!!! And I have read of news directors in Florida and elsewhere around this country trying the same thing.

I don’t dare ask how this radical experiment is doing in the ratings … all my fingers and toes are tightly crossed.

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, national television is the critical force. What we do and say and show really matters. It has an effect on our local communities, our states, our country, and on the state of the world.

You get the point … the powers that be … the money men, have decided over the last several years to eviscerate us. It actually costs a bit of money to produce good journalism … to travel, to investigate … to put on compelling viewing, to give people a reason to watch us.

But God forbid they should spend money on quality … no, let’s just cheapskate our way into the most demeaning, irrelevant, super-hyped, sensationalism we can find. And then we wonder why people are tuning out in droves … it’s not just the new competition, it’s the drivel we spew into their living rooms….

Network correspondent christiane Amanpour speaking in 2000 to RTNDA.

… And there is so much good stuff being produced here in the United States … but think how much more of a contribution we could make to this great society if we weren’t so dependent on what those hocus-pocus groups tell us people are not interested in:

• Oh, Americans don’t care about serious news.
• Oh, Americans don’t care about this presidential election.
• Oh, Americans don’t care about foreign news.
• Oh, Americans don’t care about anything but contemplating their own navels.

H. L. Menken once said that no one would ever go broke underestimating the American people, but that’s just flat out not true … what Americans don’t care much about is the piffle we put on TV these days, what they don’t care about is boring, irrelevant, badly told stories, and what they really hate is the presumption that they are too stupid to know the difference. That’s why they are voting with their off switch, which means that pandering to what we think people want is simply bad business. And we alienate our core constituency.

For example, why are we terrorizing the country at large leading with murder and mayhem when crime is actually on the decline?

Source: Radio–Television News Directors Association, News Release, http://www.rtnda.org/news/2000/asera.shtml

Box 1.1. CNN Correspondent Tells Local TV News Directors to Place News Quality above Profit Margins. (Photo courtesy Radio–Television News Directors Association, 2000)

Crime news, particularly violent crime, is a staple for local television news. Since the 1970s, local television stations have invested in large newsrooms as “profit centers.” Using “eyewitness” and “action news” formats, the news became a prime source of identity for local stations. These formats became successful in the television ratings by emphasizing crime news. The labels have been dropped, but the tone remains central to how local television stations cover the news today. The reliance on crime as “breaking news,” “live,” and “top stories” continues.

In this book we define crime broadly as behaviors that violate public laws designed to protect persons and property. Two competing models in criminal justice, due process and crime control, emphasize the innocence or guilt of the accused and the processing of defendants (Surette, 1998, pp. 15, 17). Local media coverage of crime and criminal justice are important because these images help lead to a social construction of reality: “People use knowledge gained from the media to construct an image of the world and behave based on the perceived reality of that image” (Surette, 1998, p. xiii). The use of police sources by local media to report crime stories may even lead to the social construction of a “crime wave” in a city, as Fishman (1980) observed in New York:

Out of news work arose a phenomenon transcending the individual happenings which were its constituent parts. A crime wave is a “thing” in public consciousness which organizes people’s perception of an aspect of their community…. The crime wave was also real in another sense. News organizes our perception of a world outside our firsthand experience. But in doing so, the media are not simply putting certain images in people’s heads…. Even though one cannot be mugged by a crime wave, one can be frightened. (pp. 10–11)

Crime coverage, then, follows the structure and organization of police work that begins at the scene of a just-committed crime:

Virtually all crime stories are about the commission of a crime (police report) and when a person is arrested (arrest report), charged with the crime (arraignment), brought to trial, convicted or acquitted, and, if convicted, sentenced. In other words, news is organized in exactly the same way as the criminal justice system “organizes” crime. And because it is organized that way and follows the same routines, the coverage tends to assume or take for granted the official organizational ideology. (Grossberg, Wartella, & Whitney, 1998, p. 331)

Local TV news emphasizes the earliest stage of crimes because “breaking news” from the scene of a crime is fresh, dramatic, and visual. A content analysis of local TV news, that will be reported in chapter 3, demonstrates how language such as “tonight’s big story,” “this just in,” and “breaking news” functions to heighten drama. KXAS, Dallas–Ft. Worth, the NBC affiliate in Texas, for example, used narrative in this reporting from the scene:

Sixteen houses make up this neighborhood. A close community where next weekend neighbors will gather for the annual fall festival. This evening, they gathered in concern, as word quickly spread that a teenager had been shot inside this home. Police carried out bags full of evidence. Neighbors were full of questions. The Monday afternoon quiet was pierced with screams. Apparently, one teen shot another teen with a 9-millimeter automatic pistol. Three hours after the screams and the gunshot rang out, police took away the crime scene tape, but not the questions. (October 11, 1999)

Live shots and on-set debriefings may stray from scripte...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Contributors
• Foreword by Deborah Potter
• Preface
• 1 Introduction to Local Television News
• 2 Theory and Research on Crime News
• 3 Crime News as Ratings Builders
• 4 Legal Aspects of Crime News Coverage
• 5 Ethics
• 6 Coverage of the Courts, Prisons, and Capital Punishment
• 7 Case Study: Three Nebraska Executions
• 8 Minorities and Crime News
• 9 Crime News and the Elderly
• 10 Television and the Future of Local Crime News
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index