The Production of Pathology:

The Social Function of Local TV News

Howard J. Ehrlich & Jason Weller

The Prejudice Institute
2743 Maryland Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21218
www.prejudiceinstitute.org

 

Along with the country as a whole, the press has too long basked in a white world, looking out of it, if at all, with the white men’s eyes and a white perspective.  That is no longer good enough.  The painful process of readjustment that is required of the American news media must begin now.  They must make a reality of integration-in both their product and personnel.  They must insist on the highest standards of accuracy -- not only reporting single events with care and skepticism, but placing each event into a meaningful perspective.  (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, [Kerner Commission], 1968, p. 389)

 

This report and proposal is part of the news media research program of The Prejudice Institute. Here we focus on the treatment of race/ethnicity, gender, and violence in local television news. We have three objectives: a review of the disparate research literature; a proposal and design for replicating the major findings; and the development of a new interpretive framework that shifts focus to institutional discrimination and to its pathological consequences for the local community.

Why study television news?  First, is the commonplace observation that news is critical to an informed citizen of a democracy.  Yet, even as we nod to the obvious, we need to acknowledge that the mass media of communications are becoming increasingly concentrated.  Ben Bagdikian in his classic book, The Media Monopoly now in its sixth edition (2000), shows that half-dozen corporate leviathans control most American media.  It is worth noting that in the first edition, in 1983, the corresponding figure was 50 corporations.

James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker (June 16 & 23, 2003), graphically describes the concentration. “Big media players control both programming and distribution.  Five companies own all the broadcast networks, four of the major movie studios, and ninety percent of the top fifty cable channels.  These companies also produce three-quarters of all prime time programming” (p.76).

This concentration of ownership and the character of the content of news programs has had particular consequences for American society.  Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols note: “Still top-heavy with white middle-class men, TV news departments and major newspapers remain in thrall to official sources.  Their obsessive focus on crime coverage and celebrity trials leaves no room for covering the real issues that affect neighborhoods and whole classes of people. Coverage of communities of color, women, gays, and lesbians, rural folks and just about everyone else who doesn’t live in a handful of ZIP codes in New York and Los Angeles is badly warped, and it creates badly warped attitudes in society”  (The Nation, November 17, 2003; p.14).

Television is an integral part of American culture and society.  It plays a pivotal role in the dissemination of news. A Gallup Poll (September 2003) reports that 57% of American adults watch local television news every day, and that more than two out of five report also watching the nightly network news and cable news.

The image of the world that is portrayed by the news media and presumably consumed by viewers has come under heavy criticism for reflecting the values and opinions of a homogenized “white world” (Kerner 1968 Commission Report).  Since the Commission’s findings nearly 36 years ago, the portrayal of traditional minorities on television shows has become a focus of academic research as well as a cause for the various minority defense agencies.  The daily news programs are no exception to this trend.  As Campbell (1995) points out, Blacks in the news are typically placed into one of three roles: criminals, victims, and celebrities.  To many critics these stylized portrayals simply fit within the framework of the media as a means to perpetuate the status quo of the dominant White society (Himmelstein, 1984; Gerbner, 1995; Chomsky, 1989; Postman, 1992).

Television news and entertainment frames the world for its viewers and very many viewers come to believe what they see on the screen. Despite the fact that the violent crime rates have been in steady decline, the prolonged viewing of local news with its unremitting coverage of crime and mayhem leads to an increase in concern over crime. Crime is in fact the most common topic in the news by a margin of 2 to 1 (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2004). Moreover, it contributes to an overall belief that the world is a dangerous place (Gerbner, 1982; 1995). Correspondingly, Gerbner’s studies of prime time programs indicates that prolonged television viewing leads to the belief that violence is an appropriate solution when one is faced with a conflict.

Many critics argue that television has simply become another device to perpetuate stereotypes and validate intergroup relations (Himmelstein, 1984; Graber 1980). Current studies of TV news have established a significant trend in reporting: the connection of race and crime.  Chiricos and Escholz (2002) in a study of Orlando, Florida television summarized the major finding of their case study: “When all persons appearing on TV news programs are considered, including reporters and anchors, 1 in 20 Whites who appear on screen is a crime suspect.  More than 1 in 8 Blacks and more than 1 in 4 Hispanics who appear on the screen during Orlando news programs are suspects of crimes.  This is one clear indicator of the criminal typification of race and ethnicity” (pp. 415-6).

Even Black community leaders and politicians can not escape stereotype assignment. Often when they appear on the news they are shown in an oppositional stance. Whether calling attention to discriminatory acts or demanding action from government officials, they are often framed as malcontents (Entman, 1994).

 Gilliam and Iyengar (2000) provide another perspective. They assert that images of Blacks and Hispanics as violent criminals are unrepresentative:  “The media’s near exclusive focus on violent crime distorts the real world in the following way:  when viewers encounter a suspect in the news he is invariably a violent perpetrator, when in reality the greatest number of felony arrests are for property crimes” (p. 562).  Typically when nonviolent crimes are covered the criminals are White, although in reality “minorities actually account for the largest share of nonviolent (property) felonies.” (Gilliam and Iyengar, 2000, p. 562)

Entman (1994) in his research program has focused on the way that young Black males are portrayed as violent criminals.  The results of his findings have been twofold.  First, is the “racialization of crime”: if certain crimes are mentioned, there is an immediate assumption that the perpetrators were Black men.  Second, is the differential portrayal of Black versus White criminals. African American suspects are more prone to be seen wearing prison garb, in handcuffs, and in the physical grasp of guards whereas Whites are more likely to be seen wearing business attire, unrestrained, and in the company of their attorneys (Entman 1994).

The Latino Presence

Most of the research dealing with Latinos has concentrated on the entertainment media. However one important survey has been conducted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists who examined the portrayal of Latinos in network television news. Specifically, they examined the network evening newscasts –ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN—for the entire year, 2002. Latino-related stories made up less than one percent of all the stories appearing in the network newscasts. Of that number, two-thirds of the stories focused on crime, terrorism and illegal immigration. As the report notes, “Latinos continued to be portrayed as a dysfunctional underclass that exists on the fringes of mainstream U.S society.” (Mendez and Alverio, 2003) The marginalization of Latinos was so comprehensive that in three out of four Latino-related stories only Anglos were interviewed.

In their analysis of local newscasts in Orlando, Florida –a city with a substantial Latino population—Chiricos and Escholz (2002) found that Latinos were more likely to be shown as violent crime suspects than they were shown for crimes in general. Further, they were more likely than Whites and Blacks to appear as criminal suspects. Finally, the researchers found that Latinos were the least likely to appear as positive role models.

The Invisible Woman

Almost all of the past research has focused on race/ethnicity, crime, and violence seriously ignoring the appearance of women in local news. For example, Weibel (1997), despite her comprehensive historical survey of the images of women in popular culture, has nothing to say about women in the news except to note that the first female news anchor (Barbara Walters) does not appear until 1976.   

The appearance of women in TV news is paradoxical. Thirty-nine percent of all television news jobs in the US are held by women, and more than one-fourth of all news directors are women. (Radio-Television News Directors Association, reported in Media Report to Women, 2003) Virtually all of the data about women in the news derive from studies of the network evening news conducted from January 1 to December 31, 2001. (The programs were ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, and CBS Evening News.)  The researchers, Media Tenor, Ltd, analyzed 18,765 individual news reports. Their primary focus was on who was selected as a source for on-camera interviews. Their overall observation was unsurprising. “Network news demonstrated a clear tendency to showcase the opinions of the most powerful political and economic actors, while giving limited access to those voices that would be most likely to challenge them.” (Howard, 2002)

There were only minor differences among the three networks. More than half the women (52%) who appeared in the news were displayed as average citizens. This was not true of male sources. Only 14 percent of them were average citizens. Women, moreover, comprised only 19 percent of sources. Men were clearly the authoritative voice; women were nonexperts. Of special note is the coverage of gender-related stories such as equal opportunity, abortion rights, and discrimination. “Women were presented as nonexpert citizens 77 percent of the time in gender-related stories. Men, by contrast, spoke as experts in their fields 100 percent of the time in such stories.” (Howard, 2002, p.13)

Overall women find themselves in a more precarious position then people of color when it comes to their representation in television news.  As Rakow and Kranich (1991) argue women’s roles are created and circumscribed by men, therefore they are empty and meaningless.  Similar to Entman’s (1994) findings with Blacks, Rakow and Kranich in their analysis of one month of transcripts from evening news on ABC, NBC, and CBS (1991) also found that women’s roles within television is stereotypic:  women are portrayed neither as newsmakers nor as sources.  Moreover, women do not appear as experts about women’s issues:  “They cannot escape their femininity, yet the possibility of making a contribution that is specifically on behalf of women is ruled out.  They may not speak as women or for women” (Rakow and Kranich 1991, p.12).  Rakow and Kranich also cite the media as contributing to the notion that feminism is a white women’s movement:  “On the rare occasions that news media personnel choose to incorporate a feminist perspective on a news story, they go to familiar, predominantly white, liberal, visible organizations.”  Perhaps most telling of all is Rakow and Kranich’s assertion that the portrayal of women, and people of color, as miscreants and troublemakers is used to the advantage of the status quo:  “Oppressive actions against women and men of other races are justified and their threat to the social order quelled when they are presented as inherently dangerous and disruptive.” (Rakow and Kranich 1991, p. 22)

The 12-minute half hour

Of the 30 minutes that are allotted for the presentation of the news, approximately 12-15 minutes is actually spent on presenting news stories.  Despite all the work that goes into creation of the newscast, Graber (1996) states that the news content in the 30- minute broadcast is comparable to that found in a single page of a newspaper.  The Project for Excellence in Journalism (2004) found that 70 percent of local television news stories are one minute or shorter (p.42). Klite, Bardwell, and Salzman (1997) found that the average news story lasts 47 seconds.  The rest of the time is committed to commercials, program promotion, weather, sports, and cheery banter between the anchors.

Because of its traditional reliance on on-the-scene footage, television news requires staff who are able to arrive on the scene to get the footage and interviews in time for broadcast. Not any footage, of course. The focus is on spectacles especially crime, but also fires, disasters, and severe weather, which account for 61 percent of the leads in the 2,400 broadcasts studied by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2004). The result is a reliance on film clips-- local, network, and independent, often repeated—and reporters “with a live update from the newsroom.”

One of the primary effects of this kind of presentation of the news is the lack of a historical context for the stories (Postman and Powers, 1992).  To understand how this process plays out daily in the news consider a story of a fire in a low income housing project.  In all likelihood the fire itself would be the subject of the story and there would not be any discussion of how and why housing projects came into existence. Assigning an investigative team to look into this is risky, time-consuming, and expensive. Keeping stories to less than a minute is much cheaper than committing staff to lengthy research assignments (Lipschultz and Hilt, 2002).

Many writers point out that the news media points to what is important by positioning stories, by allotting a longer air time to the story, and by repeating the story, or a teaser about the story, several times throughout the newscast.  As paradoxical as it may seem, newscasts devote a large amount of time to self-promotion. The Rocky Mt. Group, in their study of local newscasts, found that teasers get “more airtime than that devoted to any single news topic except crime” (Klite, Bardwell, and Salzman 1997, p.108). 

An interesting facet of these broadcasts is that very little is left to chance including the dialogue between an anchor and a reporter which is often scripted and rehearsed before going live (Postman and Powers, 1992).  An “uninformed” viewer may see this dialogue and figure that the anchor is engaging critically in the story and questioning the information that the reporter is providing.  This process thus assists with providing legitimacy to the story as well as to the newscast.   This idea is supported by a national survey in which 54% of the respondents said that they place a great deal or a fair amount of “trust and confidence” that the media is “reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” (Gallup, 2003) Black viewers, more than Whites, are more critical of the news and especially racial issues within the news.

Give the people what they want?

Many program directors simply claim that they are giving viewers what they want.  In contrast to this claim, Gerbner (1982, 1995) found that when people were given a choice between violent and nonviolent content they typically chose the nonviolent. Station managers also cite budgetary constraints as a major factor that perpetuates stories being less than a minute long.

Lack of ethnic and cultural diversity in TV news management may also be an important factor in deciding what gets aired.  Presently, White males predominate as officials and managers of television stations (Lipschultz and Hilt, 2002).  A study conducted by Lind (2001) found that when a racially diverse group of individuals were asked to construct a news program from a list of stories, Blacks and Whites identified very different stories to cover.  In response to this issue, Wilson and Gutierrez (1985) suggest that greater racial/ethnic diversity in higher level positions, will allow more people a significant voice on how, who, and what is portrayed in the media.

We are living in a material world

The primary intended and recognized function (what sociologists call the “manifest function”) of local news is to sell advertising time for consumer goods and services. Station revenues depend on its ability to draw an audience at the least cost to itself. The coverage of crime and spectacles bolstered by the weather report and sports, have become the conventional mode for organizing the news program and enticing viewers. The standard TV industry claim is that they are presenting what the viewing audience wants.  Although the claim is not well-documented, it is the case that local news programming is highly profitable. In contrast, in seven surveys conducted from 1975 to 1997, most respondents indicate their dissatisfaction with violent programming (Potter, 2003).

 

Postman and Powers (1992) engaged in a critical examination of the way that commercialization has affected news programs.  They concluded that the evening news is presented in such a way that it keeps viewers attention long enough to get them to the next commercial break.  Similarly, Harris (1996) found, in a 30-minute clip of a CNN broadcast, that there were 289 ads and logos on the screen, as endorsements, product placements, and overt advertisements.  Klite, Bardwell, and Salzman (1997) report that in some markets there is as much as 12 minutes of commercial time in some “thirty-minute” news programs. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (2004) reports an average of 14 stories but notes that there were stations reporting as few as 7 stories per night. One station typically aired 27 stories. In a few cases there was more time allocated to commercials than to the news itself.

Aside from the obvious profits generated by local news programs, commercials serve two significant sociological functions. First, the commercial provides the viewer a release from the grim and violent news. It transports the viewer back to life as usual.

Second, the frequency of commercials, and their often attention-getting power, serves to fragment the news. Not only does the newscast fail to focus on the issues, as opposed to the events, but it provides no space for the viewer to do so. To a large extent the one consequence of the news as presented is to confuse people. Finally, we need to remind ourselves that the effects of watching TV news will not be uniform across the audience. Chiricos and his associates (1997) argue that the viewer’s life experiences affect the way that s/he interprets the news: “The issue is not whether media accounts of crime increase fear, but which audiences, with which experiences and interests, construct which meanings from the messages received” (p.354). Viewers will perceive the news in ways that makes sense to them. One example noted by Chiricos was the fear response of White women when they viewed   “women like themselves” as victims on the news.

A Critical Sociological Perspective

Viewed from the standpoint of a critical sociologist, local television news functions to present short stories which offer the viewer an interpretation of the world, offering it from the security of home. It functions to validate the viewer’s perception of the world.  It does so primarily by reinforcing the legitimacy of the sociopolitical system.  That is, it tells people that everything is really ok and that life goes on as usual.  More than that, with its overbearing focus on crime it “reminds” people that this is a good society in which deviants will be punished.  (On the role of TV modeling social order, see Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, 1991.)

The newscast conceptualized in its entirety is a performance piece-- entertainment held together by a familiar structure and the banter of the news anchors, the weather person and the sportscaster. Of special interest to us here is that TV news presents the relations of dominant and subordinate groups in society without question.  The main process by which it does so is by the treatment of news as an event typically without a history or social causation. The socioeconomic discrepancies among minority and dominant groups are drawn in three ways:  First, by generally ignoring minorities; second, by depicting them in their limited appearances predominantly as criminals, victims, malcontents, or filler; and third by the selection of White males as authority figures. What people view, then, is a set of visual narratives which reaffirm the workings of society. 

Journalists make decisions about what they think is newsworthy. In doing so, they make the news. Correspondingly, the television news program is a construction of events which by their presentation on the air become newsworthy.  This idea is also supported by Lipschultz :  “Local television news constructions essentially distribute knowledge to a local community in ways that influence decision making, create a ‘dominant’ social product, and lead to a social construction of reality that ‘steers public policy’” (Lipschultz, 2002, p.17).  One of the effects of this “steering of public policy” is the marginalization of minority news because it does not fit within the interests of mainstream White males (Campbell 1995). Some critics conceptualize the mainstreaming of television as a structural issue. Jeffrey Scheuer (2000), for example, asserts that in its very structure television is a conservative medium. Television’s major systematic effect is “simplification,” he writes. The absence of the coverage of issues is a consequence of TV’s inescapable rejection of ambiguity and complexity, and its tendency toward emotional imagery. Thus, the structure itself leads to a bias in favor of the status quo.

The past study of television news has, like the news itself, a somewhat narrow focus. Its primary focus has been on the consequences of the news in its portrayal of race/ethnicity and violence and in its rendering of women as irrelevant. Its secondary focus has been on the structure of the newscast itself. Here the researchers have examined the amount of time allocated to the various news sources. For example, how long was the news hole? Did it cover the statehouse, the city council, the environment? What about sports and the weather? Were there warm and fuzzy stories? How much time did the anchors spend in small talk? Where it has focused on race/ethnicity in particular, it has not gone much beyond observations of manifest content.

With a few exceptions, television news research has been done on a case study basis. That is, researchers have been limited to usually a single city and sometimes to a single TV station. This does not necessarily affect the quality of the study, but it does affect its generalizability. Thus, when we observe inconsistencies between the studies of Chicago and Orlando, (Entman vs. Chiricos), we can not determine whether they are methodologically generated or solid observations of differences in news coverage. Furthermore, almost all of the research has focused on Black/White differences, ignoring class, gender, and other ethnicities. From an operational standpoint, these are matters which can be easily corrected by better sampling and by a broader protocol for analyzing the manifest content of the newscasts.

The fact is, however, that the focus on manifest content is quite misleading, though patently important. We contend that the significance of the local newscast is much broader than these studies would lead you believe. The media critic, Mark Crispin Miller, comes closest to articulating the toxic effect of the news. His examination of the crime coverage of the five major Baltimore stations led him to conclude:

Local television news’ excessive emphasis on crime is steadily killing the very city it covers. While crime is a reality on the urban scene, the daily televised prominence of gore and violence in the broadcast news –the “if it bleeds, it leads formula”—is inadvertently bleeding the life and wealth out of Baltimore. (Miller, 1998)

The local TV newscast has an impact, as Miller suggests, well-beyond its manifest content. As we have seen, it reaffirms the status structure in society by its racialization of crime and violence, its depiction of minority leaders as malcontents, the invisibility and low status of women and the concomitant selection of White males as authority figures, and its marginalization of dissent. From the perspective of the community, local TV news fails to provide serious reporting on issues as opposed to events, and what it does cover is done in the context of fast-paced short sound bites and visuals sandwiched between commercials, program promotions, and teasers concerning upcoming news coverage.

The unintended and unrecognized consequences of a social institution–its “latent functions”—are typically quite removed from its stated mission. In this case, we view the latent function of the local news program as depleting the social capital of the community. In the structure of news programming and its underlying policies, TV news reaffirms social discrimination quite independent of the intent of the institution or the manner in which it does so.   Further, in our model, discrimination is a necessary condition for ethnoviolence.

Social Capital

Our guiding hypothesis is that local TV news in its current form functions to deplete the social capital of the communities it covers. We conceptualize the news program as the mechanism for contributing to or withdrawing from the social capital of the city. Each story is a transaction and, at the end of the broadcast, these transactions sum to an account. We recognize, too, that these transactions can be synergistic. For example, 15 stories (in 20 minutes) dealing with murder, child molestation, fire, auto accident, and robbery yields something more than a litany of crime and catastrophe. It is a depiction of the community as a dangerous place, one in which anyone different can be a realistic threat. To the extent that ethnic minorities, women, and other subordinated categories are associated with these pathologies or are rendered invisible in these transactions, the news program is transmitting a social justification for discrimination.

As sociological auditors, we examine these accounts in keeping with these questions:

What is the event making news?  What is the territorial base of the event—local community, state, regional, national, or international?  What is the social status and roles of those portrayed in these events?  What is the event-specific status of those on camera—background, protagonist, commentator? Is the event being covered an index crime or a disastrous occurrence? In these events, were those on-camera a witness, participant, victim, perpetrator?  Is the event being covered a governmental or nongovernmental issue? Does the event center on celebrations, holidays, or feature a non-news human interest story?

In sum, is this transaction contributing to the social capital of the city? A story and/or newscast will be said to contribute to the social capital in the degree to which it (1)  is of relevance to the well-being of the community and (2) is egalitarian in its depiction of people by their social characteristics and event specific statuses. It subtracts from the social capital to the degree to which the news stories presented are not relevant to the well-being of the community, are nonlocal, and are discriminatory in its selection of persons on camera and the manner in which they are depicted.

It should be clear that our model comprises three components: violence, discrimination, and social capital. While it is obvious that violence is destructive of community bonds, and that it plays a central role in news presentations, the issue of discrimination requires some elaboration.

Discrimination

“Discrimination” refers to actions which deny equal treatment to a category of persons. The result is to restrict opportunities or rewards available to others and/or distribute negative sanctions toward them. “Structural discrimination” refers to organizational policies and practices which have a discriminatory outcome regardless of the intent of the organization or its representatives (Pincus and Ehrlich, 1999). What we have observed is an unintended but ubiquitous pattern of discrimination in local newscasts. The frequency and density of these acts, of course, remains to be tested. Note that we depart from past research which overwhelmingly conceptualizes its observations as stereotyping. In fact, local news broadcasts are steeped in stereotypes, but the significant sociological dimension is that newscasts are covertly acting out an institutional policy that is discriminatory.

The Research Proposal

In this study we focus upon the structure and content of the news and the sociological inferences that may be drawn from them. It is important to reiterate that we are not examining audience effects nor are we examining the characteristics of the communities in which the news is assembled. Both of these are critical and important parts of our research agenda. The first step, however, is to test and document our central hypothesis that local TV news presents a depiction of the community that, in its differential treatment of persons, is discriminatory and essentially destructive of its social integration.

Finally, in this shifting of levels of analysis, we need to reiterate that we exclude from consideration the intention of the producers, reporters, and news directors. While programs are assembled according to their agenda and news values, as well as their structural limitations and financial concerns, our agenda and sociological and social psychological concerns are the view of community that is being broadcast and its implication for social discrimination. What makes this study unique is its focus on discrimination, its examination of discrimination in the context of violence, and its depiction of the local community through the rigorous testing of multiple hypotheses using multiple, alternative research operations in a sampling that cuts across stations and cities throughout the United States.

The news program consists of an introductory teaser and introduction of the news anchors and ends with a clear sign-off.  The program will be examined by the length of its news hole, number of stories, ranking of stories by their appearance their length, and their complexity

A news story is a narrative which has a clearly signaled beginning and end. News stories and the characters and events which comprise them are our central units of analysis. Characters in a news story include all persons on camera who are identified by the newscaster and or who speak longer than 30 seconds and or who appear in close-ups more than once. We distinguish between the protagonists who are central to the story and essential characters who help make or move the story along. Usually on camera there will also be minor characters whose appearance, typically in group shots or camera sweeps, is not necessary to the story.

              .

These are our basic, initial hypotheses. It should be apparent that they have been culled from the studies which we have reviewed.

1. News stories are predominantly nonlocal.

2. The protagonists of news stories (newsmakers) are predominantly White, Anglo, males

3. The essential characters in news stories are predominantly White, Anglo, males.

4. The minor characters are predominantly people of color and women.

5. The predominant categories of stories (standard fare) will be crime, violence, disasters and accidents.

6. Standard fare stories will generally not be stories of general community interest.

7. People of color and women will be overrepresented in standard fare stories. (Overrepresented here refers to a comparison with White males.)

8. Black and Latino males will be overrepresented in their appearance as criminal suspects and as suspects in violent crimes.

9. People of color and women will be overrepresented as victims of crimes.

10. People of color and women will be overrepresented as victims.

11. People of color and women will be overrepresented as victims of disasters and accidents.

12. Women will be largely invisible, that is, will not appear on screen or will appear as minor characters.

13. Latinos will be largely invisible, that is, will not appear on screen or will appear as minor characters

14. In news stories dealing with issues of specific relevance to women and people of color, the protagonists will tend to be White, Anglo, males.

15. Women on screen will tend to be depicted in subordinate roles.

16. Latinos on screen will tend to be portrayed in an underclass position.

17. Experts, pundits, and positive authorities will be predominantly White, Anglo males.

18. News stories will be focused on events as contrasted with a focus on issues.

19. Stories involving people of color and women will be underrepresented as issue stories.

20. The basic depiction of the local community as indexed by our measures is essentially negative.

The index itself needs to be understood as an empirical construction which we will likely determine based on the characteristics of the newscasts through the use of some form of cluster analysis.

The Research Operations

Following the successful procedure pioneered by the now defunct Rocky Mountain Media Group, we will distribute video cassettes to a national network of volunteers who have agreed to videotape their local evening news program at 10 or 11. The programs will all be recorded on specific dates. Our goal is the collection of 100 newscasts.  

The volunteer’s role will be highly limited to recording the program, including the pre-program teaser and a possible post-program station editorial. They will be asked to label the tape with its identifying information. They will also be given a very brief questionnaire which, among other things, will ask for their appraisal of the typicality of the program they recorded. The program analysis will be conducted by the Institute’s research assistants and interns.

The units of analysis are the individual news program and news story. Each will be indexed by the presence or absence of the variables under study. (These observations will be entered into an SPSS file for analysis.) The basic categories of analysis and coding protocol are presented in Appendix One.

 

Concluding Remarks   

Most of the materials reviewed here have derived from studies of network newscasts and occasionally relevant studies of the print media.  Research directed at local television has not been very comprehensive.  The local studies have focused almost exclusively on the social functions of crime stories with an emphasis on the treatment of African Americans.  The larger research programs—Rocky Mountain Media Group and the Project for Excellence in Journalism— has had more specialized concerns.  Rocky Mt. has focused on the coverage of electoral politics.  The Journalism Project has examined TV news more from the perspective of television management than from a sociological perspective.

The study proposed here is unique from a variety of perspectives.  First, it is an encompassing examination of who and what gets depicted as newsworthy.  It will analyze these depictions by the social roles, race/ethnicity, and gender of those on screen.  The fundamental concern here is the degree to which these constructed news stories discriminate in their choices of newsworthy subjects.  Second, the study will examine the implications of the stories told and the people selected to tell them from the standpoint of the community.  The fundamental concern here is the effect of the underlying messages about the community.  In particular, we are uniquely concerned with the balance of social capital in these daily news transactions.

Works Cited

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Ericson, R., Baranek, P., and Chan, J.  (1991).  Representing order:  Crime, law, and justice in the news media.  Toronto:  University of Toronto Press.

 

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Gerbner, G. (1982). The world according to television. American Demographics.              October.

 

Gerbner, G. (1995).  Television violence: the power and the peril.  In Gender, race and class in media (G. Dines and J.M. Humez Eds.).  Pgs. 547-557.  Thousand Oaks: Sage.

 

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