Not in the Public Interest
Local TV news in the U.S. takes a beating in analysis of content.

(In The Eugene Weekly, Oct. 1, 1998 Vol 17, No 39)

by Paul Dresman

Volunteers across the U.S. videotaped 102 local news broadcasts on the night of March 11 and sent the tapes to be analyzed by Rocky Mountain Media Watch in Denver. The result: A just-published 40-page document that tells you more about television news, including its successes and failures, than you are likely to learn from any other source - especially TV.

Some of the general conclusions drawn by the three-person team who made the analysis are what you might expect:

"The news is seriously and consistently out of balance on most stations, with a heavy emphasis on crime, disaster, hype, triviality and commercials.

"Many issues, like education, the environment, poverty, arts, science, labor, AIDS and governance are neglected.

"Sensational reporting generates high emotion (arousal) and ratings, but does not inform citizens about the range of important issues facing their communities."

The analyzers include a statistical breakdown of time percentages spent on topic areas during newscasts and a further breakdown on individual television stations. While almost all television news appears to thrive on crime stories, there are wide differences among individual stations.

KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, for example, will not air sensational crime events and is a model in terms of how to succeed without promoting violence and the now big business of Crime. KSAZ-TV of Phoenix, Ariz., however, achieves a Mayhem Index of 83.7 per cent - which means a nearly unrelenting stream of criminal items and disasters across its half hour (and, perhaps as a result, a notoriously mean county sheriff who houses prisoners in tents).

As the authors of "Not in the Public Interest" state: "Violence is part of life and part of the news. However, when stations dwell on it, glamorize it, or wallow in it, violence can become a tool of manipulation."

Crime rates have been falling in America, but crime remains a bigger business than ever. The average amount of time devoted to reporting crime in a half-hour broadcast across America on March 11, was 27 percent. More Americans are in our gulags than ever before, more than any other industrialized nation. The prisoners are kept longer, and they are often, as in Oregon, required to do forced labor - in the exact fashion of totalitarian states.

The nightly news serves as a method for sensationalizing crime, for beefing up police and prison systems, and for substantiating large bureaucracies whose greatest social effects are further control over free citizens and free speech. The psychological effect of this is division and suspicion among people who really must work together.

We over-emphasize sports in our society (which averages 11 percent of local news broadcasts) because it is one area in our culture where people do apparently work together as members of teams. Of course, the rest of us also work together, but news about labor amounts to only 1 percent of our local news broadcast.

The vaunted free market and its squawk box practice virtual censorship of labor, science, civil rights, poverty, peace, AIDS, abortion rights, and rate absolute zero on the subject of overpopulation. (We may be seen but not heard on this subject.)

It is typical for us to blame monopoly practices in the media marketplace as the cause of television news' shortfalls and shortcomings, but that is not necessarily true. A Fox affiliate in San Francisco, KTVU, provided an exemplary newscast on March 11. Perhaps the individual community determines more about the news it will receive because, in certain communities, individuals and groups are willing to write, call, criticize and make a difference in the programming of the news.

When large percentages of local news are given to sex, fluff, hype for themselves, or hype for their other programs, it is easy to despair about improvements and to reject the medium (TRASH YOUR TV), but, as the writers of this document note: Television has "the power to sell goods, influence opinion, elect candidates, trigger violence, set agendas, and drag us in and out of wars." Even so, the broadcasters do not acknowledge their power nor "do they show much sensitivity to the responsibilities of such power."

When you read the "Conclusions" section of this report, it is a lesson in the realization between psychological arousal and consumption. Advertiser use "triggers" to tap into our emotional responses. Stupid TV fluff stories about puppies are meant to make your heart melt and thus to sell you something you don't need. What percentage of a half-hour news cast is given to commercials? The average is 30 percent, although some stations are as high as 40 percent commercial time.

If, as the writers here conclude, "the local TV news diet is seriously and chronically discordant ... a toxic stew of pervasive negative influences in our culture," how might it be changed?

The Rocky Mountain Media Watch group offers four possibilities:

* Owners and advertisers have to see beyond the bottom line.

* Congress and the FCC should restore meaning to the promise of the public airwaves and the public interest.

* Journalists must raise their ethical standards and fight to keep the entertainment industry out of the newsroom.

* Citizens must become critical viewers, aware of the manipulation and conditioning that passes for news.

Concerning number four, above, the poet Edward Dorn once remarked that television was not so important for what it showed but for what it screened out. This kind of awareness requires a willingness to look beyond the mass media, to read, ask questions, and use your imagination. Of the two necessary faculties for an active mind, memory and imagination, neither are much encouraged on the news. Ideas are argued only on the best programs. Here is where entertainment as news/news as entertainment is truly pernicious.

If you are interested in this publication, "Not in the Public Interest," it is available for $20 from: Rocky Mountain Media Watch, Box 18858, Denver, CO 80218.

Paul Dresman is a member of Eugene Media Watch. The organization will hold a benefit for the Rocky Mountain Media Watch group at 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 2, at the Grower's Market, 454 Willamette St., Eugene.

KVAL Better Than Most
KVAL, Channel 13, was the only

Eugene station examined March 11. Out of 102 stations monitored nationwide, KVAL ranked 21st in news coverage with 44.7 percent; 59th in crime coverage with 22.3 percent; 83rd in the "mayhem" category with 22.3 percent; 84th in "fluff" at 16.9 percent; and 77th in commercials with 28.7 percent.

KVAL beat three Portland stations in terms of relatively high news coverage and low fluff.