In LA: If It Bleeds, It Leads
We have all heard the old saying, “If it bleeds, it leads,” and most of us have seen the results of this flawed approach on our evening TV news. However, sometimes it’s what we don’t see that’s most worrying. If stories of crime and car accidents make headlines, what stories are left untold?
A new study from the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism tries to capture what is lost when our news is full of crime, weather, fluff and sports. For example, in L.A., crime stories led in one out of every three stories, but reporting about L.A.’s budget crisis “topped local news only one time out of 100.” The study also explored how L.A.’s TV stations compared to the L.A. Times coverage of local city government.
In the video below, Marty Kaplan, Director of the Normal Lear Center, discusses some of the report’s findings.
Disclosure: Marty Kaplan is a board member of the Free Press Action Fund.
There is serious cause for
There is serious cause for concern here. Most people get their local news from television (radio or internet resources like search on mp3 occupy the lower place). If local television isn’t doing the job, we can hardly expect our citizens to be aware of what is going on with our governments. We can expect the civic community now to begin to weigh in on license renewals based on the degree of local hard news coverage. Still, it stands to reason that the country of the free gets what the country deserves.