Bad News   

Polls indicate more Americans get their local news from television than newspapers. But just what are they getting? In many cases, the answer is violent crime, abandoned warehouse fires and cutesy features.

The Cult of Personality--By Howard Rosenberg

When someone from print comments about television news, his objectivity is automatically suspect. Our judgment, as the argument goes, is distorted by envy: We're jealous of our TV counterparts because they're more famous and better paid. Or because we realize that we're the past and they're the future.

In my case, the bias label doesn't apply. In my house, electronic news is cherished, and we couldn't survive without it. For example, there's nothing my wife and I enjoy more on a Saturday night than having some friends over, pouring a few drinks, turning on the local news..and dancing.

All right, cards on the table. No objectivity. That's because local news – in Los Angeles, at least – is mostly an extension of the entertainment programs that surround it. If I want nightly triple features of violence – endless coverage of grisly, blood-spattered offenses that feeds our paranoia about crime – I know where to find it. Local news.

If I want the latest buzz on crashes, fires and natural disasters – or anything that can be conveyed with striking pictures – I know where to find it. Local news.

If I want a big, wheezing laugh, local news again.

Yet, really, what's to laugh about? Increasingly, we depend on these people to inform us about our communities and our connections to the wider universe. But talk about being unequal to a task. At a critical time for America, when an intricate tangle of problems demands a smarter, more enlightened public, local news stubbornly refuses to be deterred from its primary objective: glorifying local news.

This driving narcissism underlies everything it does. Take the emphasis on personalities. To encourage viewers to watch newscasts for the wrong reasons, stations for years have promoted their local news personalities not only as a family unto themselves – warm, cuddly and complementary – but also as the community's extended family. These aren't cold androids, you see, they're Uncle Fred and Aunt Figgie. They care about us, they're part of us. How could we not welcome these wonderful human beings into our homes each evening?

Oh, please. Only politicians are as self-serving and self-congratulatory as local newscasters. The drive of these camera peacocks to preen and strut for viewers has become so compulsive that the message of news has inevitably shrunk to a tiny, gray blip against their blinding gloss.

And who are these messengers, anyway? Increasingly, they enter the "business" to become personalities, not journalists. With the exception of sportscasters, they rarely cover beats. A station in a top 10 market that will think nothing of assigning two or three persons to sports will typically have no one regularly covering education, or the environment, or local government, or minorities, or public health. That's not its agenda. Instead, its reporters careen from hot spot to hot spot, rarely staying on one topic long enough to acquire knowledge. Hence, rather than prepare the public for what's ahead, local news is inevitably shallow and reactive.

Ironically, this jumping-bean reflexiveness itself has become a tool of self promotion, epitomizing the "We're on top of everything" syndrome in which the message becomes the technology. KABC, the top-rated L.A. news station, is especially cute about it, making a piece of machinery – its Eyewitness Newsvan – the symbol of its proficiency. Reporters no longer report live from the field without adding that they're "with the Eyewitness Newsvan" to convey an image of action.

Far more significant is the tendency of stations to abuse technology by deploying live coverage as a gimmick, to gratuitously go live solely to impress viewers. In L.A., that can mean preempting daytime programming to air live chopper coverage of cops-and-robbers-style freeway car chases that offer action, but no news. And it can mean erasing chunks of prime time for live coverage of an essentially meaningless story, purely for competitive reasons.

If news, indeed, is the first draft of history, then television's live reporting is often the scribbled notes of the first draft. That was the case in L.A. when the city's three network-owned-and-operated stations went live for as much as an hour on a recent evening to cover a moderate earthquake outside distant Bakersfield that caused minor damage and no injuries. Having little information did not stop the anchors from babbling continuously. But at least they were live .

Even trickier is the live standup used in conjunction with a story that is hours old, or even days old, to convince viewers what they're watching is fresh. This self-promotional show biz requires reporters to stick around for the standup when they could be doing something more productive.

In fact, it's likely the entire newscast could be doing something more productive.

Rosenberg is a television critic for the Los Angeles Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1985.

David Bartlett --Viewers like it
Why are people saying all these terrible things about local television news?

More people are watching news on television than ever before. Study after study confirms that the vast majority of Americans get most or all of their news, especially their local news, from television. Local television is far from perfect, of course, but the audience seems to like it. So what is it that the critics find so troubling?
Listening to politicians, special interest groups and assorted civic boosters, one might be tempted to blame local television news for just about everything that is wrong with modern society. These people would have us believe, for example, that news coverage of violence automatically breeds more violence for news organizations to cover.

The more strident critics of local television news even accused stations in Los Angeles of trying to incite riots by airing aggressive news promotion campaigns prior to the second Rodney King verdict. But if the coverage leading up to the second verdict was such a blatant incitement to riot, where were the riots? In fact, the well publicized presence of law enforcement, along with aggressive news coverage, helped forestall further rioting, in sharp contrast to the aftermath of the first verdict, when both the police and news media were caught unprepared.

Violence has been a part of our world far longer than television, or even journalism. Even if coverage of crime and violence could be shown to encourage more of the same, and there is no credible evidence that it does, would the public really prefer to be kept in the dark? Just because terrorists do their dreadful work largely to get television coverage for their various causes, does the public want television news to refrain from reporting on terrorism?
Local television news is, in fact, among our society's most democratic institutions. Millions of viewers vote their preferences every night. The results are available every morning. With the enormous number of choices now available to local television viewers, news programmers are not about to do anything consciously to offend this increasingly fragile and fragmented audience. For better or worse, local television news quite accurately reflects the needs and interests of the viewing public.

Yet critics persist in charging that television is shallow, sensational and inaccurate. Anyone who wants to depend on the newspaper as a primary source of information is free to do so. But hearing newspaper critics beat up on local television news reminds me of a dinosaur condemning a mammal for acting silly.
Television has always been a better mirror than a spotlight. It reflects reality far more effectively than it creates it. The public would be better served if politicians and special interest groups spent more time dealing with the reality that television news reports and less time trying to coerce television journalists into sweeping uncomfortable realities under a rug of censorship.

Modern politicians fear the power and popularity of television, just as their predecessors feared powerful newspapers. But the watchdog responsibility of the press to strike fear in the hearts of elected officials is exactly what the authors of the First Amendment were trying to protect. It surely never occurred to them that the free press might one day be stripped of its constitutional protection because its primary means of delivery had evolved from ink to electricity.

Politicians have always found it more expedient to blame journalists than to tackle real problems. Special interest groups refuse to believe that any story is fair and accurate unless it slavishly promotes their narrow points of view. But the general public simply depends on television news to find out what's happening in the world, even if it occasionally makes them uncomfortable. It is to this audience, and this audience only, that local television news is ultimately responsible.

Bartlett is the president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

Phyllis Kaniss -- Too few reporters
Everyone, it seems, has a problem with local television news. For some it is the murder and mayhem, the all too grisly nightly procession of body bags and overturned tractor-trailers. For others, it is the shameless voyeurism, the local reporter racing anywhere and everywhere in his mobile satellite truck in a never-ending search for victims who will cry in front of the camera. Still other viewers resent the way the locals increasingly use news time for thinly veiled ads for their station's prime time programming. And some just don't like the anchorwoman's new hairstyle or lipstick shade.

But to anyone who has systematically measured and analyzed the content of local television news, what is most disturbing about the medium is not what we see but what we don't see. The old joke about local news is that "if it bleeds, it leads." But it is the corollary that should concern us: If it doesn't bleed – or choke with emotion – it doesn't air. Unfortunately, most matters of public consequence fail to pass the blood-and-tears litmus test of local television news.

It has become the dirty little secret of local television news that certain kinds of stories – those concerning politics and government – are being quietly edged out of newscast lineups. In Philadelphia's 1991 mayoral race, my research found that the three major local stations devoted from 26 seconds to a little over a minute a day to campaign coverage in their early and late evening broadcasts combined. And what filled that brief time was laughable. Almost three-quarters of the stories dealt with the horse race or personal attacks, rather than substantive issues. And only rarely was a reporter assigned to cover a campaign event. Instead, cameramen were sent out to collect video of candidates walking to podiums or shaking hands in a crowd, and campaign press releases were used to write the 20-second voice-overs.

While network news has been criticized for the eight-second sound bite accorded presidential contenders, my research on local television news suggests that candidates might as well be mimes. Unless they are savagely attacking an opponent (preferably about some past personal transgression), candidates do not even get a sound bite on local television. During the 1992 California senatorial primary, campaigns found it so difficult to get television coverage of their plans and proposals that they gave up making public appearances and resigned themselves to using advertising to reach the voters.

The coverage of local government is even worse. Stations will spend days covering pickets in a suburban school bus driver strike but completely ignore questions of educational performance and funding. They will be live on the scene of an office building vacated because of toxic fumes but remain mute on the question of regional air pollution control. Urban violence will be covered in the most graphic detail but there will not be a glance at the institutions set up to prevent crime or rehabilitate criminals. And how many local newscasts sent crews to Los Angeles to cover the police brutality verdict, while paying no attention to the question of how President Clinton's jobs bill – being considered that very week – could affect urban poverty in their own inner cities?

The reason for this neglect of important local concerns, as with so much in television, is money. Politics and government stories just don't sell, say news directors armed with focus group research. People find them a yawn and will grab the zapper if they see something boring on their screen. What the news honchos will leave out, however, is that it is just too damn expensive to try to cover politics and government in a way that would make them interesting.
Part of the problem is that each local television market is composed of so many governments – including cities, suburbs, smaller towns and rural areas. It takes an awful lot of reporters to cover all the school board, zoning board and tax board meetings of all those townships and boroughs. But lots of reporters is something that local television stations – even in the largest markets – do not have.

While metropolitan newspapers have expended vast resources in the past decade to try to cover the affairs of their politically fragmented suburbs, local television stations have made no such commitment. Faced with increasing competiition from independent and cable stations, and under pressure to cut costs, they have figured out how to make do with only a handful of reporters.

How do they do it? By writing off the routine coverage of politics and government and covering instead only those stories which possess sufficient horror or pathos to grab the attention of audiences no matter where in the region they live. And by cramming stories full of sexy video and emotional sound bites to mask their shallow content, much as the makers of junk food douse sugar on to disguise the bland consistency of their non-nutritional fare.

And so the real reason so much gory crime and so little government news is covered by local television news is not because it's what the audience wants, but because it's easy. The accidental shooting of a child will make it onto television news because there is little investigation needed to report it, and it's a story that can be packed with gut-wrenching video of sobbing family members. But the far more pervasive threats to the health and survival of children – like the need for immunization and prenatal care – will receive little mention on local television because these stories require far more research. And crippling disabilities, as horrible as they are to the victims, just can't compete visually with tiny white coffins being hauled to cemeteries.

The consequences of such misguided coverage are not trivial. In a nation where more and more people are getting most of their information about politics from television, local candidates get elected largely as a result of their advertising campaigns, not news coverage. Federal programs to aid cities go down to defeat as opponents label them "pork barrel expenditures" with little contradiction from the affable local anchor. And while government budgets to fight crime – local television's raison d'etre – keep escalating, funds for programs ignored by the medium, such as health, education and social services, continue to be slashed with little public awareness or outcry.

Ignoring politics and government may make economic sense to a bottom-line oriented television station, but it's time to recognize that it does a great disservice to the public good.

Kaniss is assistant dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Making Local News." Her new book, "The Media and the Mayor's Race," will be published next year.

Jamie Malanowski--Murder travels
What's so bad about local news? Uh, well, not much, at least as long as people keep trying to blow up the World Trade Center, and Woody Allen and Mia Farrow keep turning their problems into a public spectacle, and mass murderers continue to be apprehended within the greater New York metropolitan area.
As long as there is actual news – news not of the listen-to-this, it's-good-for-you, like-doing-homework-and-eating-tofu variety, but news of the hey-did-you-hear-that? type – local news people are usually able to stick to their knitting, namely, taking clear pictures and rewriting wire service copy and newspaper articles into serviceable narration. It's only when the world stops cooperating and ceases to deliver attention-getting material that local news feels obliged to fall back into reporting the tiresome, complicated, and often not very illuminating activities of local officials and neighborhood residents, spiced up with thinly imagined features, like canned interviews with actors or the theatricalized adventures of overheated consumer protectors.

Why are tabloid-quality stories the only ones that work on local news? One reason is that the story can be carried with mundane video. A boring story, such as a bill signing at city hall, with terribly boring video (the mayor signing a bill at city hall) is fatal. Even a fairly interesting-but-complex story, such as the indictment of Clark Clifford, cannot be sustained with boring video of Clifford walking past reporters saying "No comment." However, when the newsmaker has done something pretty outrageous, the viewers' blood is sufficiently worked up that just seeing Woody Allen or Bernard Goetz whisking past reporters is enough to support the story. Another reason why tabloid-quality stories work is that it's pretty hard on the local level to make viewers care about anything except stories that work on a human interest level. A story like IBM's troubles will play big in Westchester County, where the company is headquartered and a lot of jobs are at stake, but nobody in New York City or on Long Island or in New Jersey cares. Murder, however, travels, as do scandal, greed and sex.
Is there anything that right-minded people concerned about the quality of local news can do? Here are some tips:

1. Don't fiddle with the anchor talent. The classic anchor team (craggy veteran anchorguy; attractive, poised, perfect second-wife-for-the-anchorguy anchorgal; jolly weatherfella; rugged sportsguy) along with the by-now classic derivations (cheerful weathergal; canny, knowledgeable sportsguy) has been tested by time and found widely palatable. Why mess with it?

Here's an easy test: If your local anchorperson can correctly pronounce Slobodan Milosevic, Mogadishu and Robert Reich, he or she is a keeper.
Still, they could all be a lot less chipper. Yes, the happy talk phenomenon has pretty much disappeared. Yes, chat is pretty nearly reserved to interchanges between anchors and weather and sports personnel. Still, anchors should be reminded, on a daily basis if necessary, that it is the unstructured, unscripted, ad-libbed moments when they seem most giddy, most superficial, most sororal and frattish – in short, at odds with all the stern, sober-sided qualities we most value in a newshost.

2. Rely less on videotape. Nearly all of the unforgivably embarrassing moments on the local news around New York recently have stemmed from the fetish for video. On at least two occasions in recent months, a local news broadcast has led – led, mind you – with coverage of a near-crash at one of the metropolitan area airports, just because a tourist happened to be shooting some tape of planes taking off and landing. These were not particularly blood-chilling events (no one was injured), and it was not particularly compelling video, but the station had it, and there was the suggestion of catastrophe, and that was all that was necessary to bump everything else back.

Now, we don't mean to be naive; obviously television is a visual medium, and pictures are pretty darn important. But when the subjects being filmed are just not newsworthy – a particularly acute problem on summer weekends, when broadcasts often include film of parades and sunbathers – pictures sure seem like the tail that wags the dog.

3. Invest in investigative reporters. It may seem implausible, but such reporters, by dint of making contacts, actually are able to report on real stories that real people really want to watch. In New York City, WNBC's police reporter, John Miller, was able to do story after story on Gotti and the mob. More recently, his contacts and enterprise have given him scoop upon scoop in the World Trade Center bombing. Having such a reporter would seem such an obvious dividend for the station that one half suspects the existence of some secret report that shows exactly the opposite. Otherwise, why would stations not rush to this solution? It's also not a very new idea – one tends to forget that Geraldo Rivera got his break investigating Willowbrook, a state-run home for the retarded, for a local station. It's hard to believe that Rivera's old stomping grounds, WABC, would show such enterprise today.

4. Here's a modest idea: On the nights when there hasn't been a fascinating crime of some sort, why not turn the broadcast over to the sportsguys and weatherfellas? These are, after all, the subjects most people care about, and the subjects the local stations seem to cover most competently. It could be billed as News for Dessert Lovers.

Malanowski is a senior features editor for Us magazine and formerly the national editor of Spy. He wrote about presidential campaign coverage in our December 1992 issue.

Ishmael Reed -- It's racist
What's wrong with local television news? It polarizes whites and blacks by racializing issues such as welfare, affirmative action and crime. After reviewing local news programming, one almost has the feeling that the media consider the black community to be an enemy nation. But instead of attacking it with missiles, the media zap it with videotape.

When reporting news about African Americans, reporters for local stations tend to wing it with their prejudices rather than go by the facts. And even when these reporters accurately present the facts, their stories are usually undermined by the accompanying visuals. The media constantly portray blacks as the victims of social problems that are more evident among whites. For example, only 39 percent of welfare recipients are black. Further, the typical beneficiary of affirmative action programs for professional jobs is a white woman. Yet when reporting about such issues, local television news will usually air tape of blacks.

In January, after California Gov. Pete Wilson's "State of the State" speech in which he announced plans to reform the welfare system, local television stations rushed out to videotape black people. The ABC affiliate in San Francisco, KGO, interviewed a black mother of four children – an atypical welfare case.
Local media – and the national media as well – treat crime in much the same way. According to Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, chair of a Senate committee on juvenile justice, gunshot wounds are the leading cause of death for both black and white youths. Yet we don't hear about white-on-white violence as much as stories about blacks killing blacks, or the rare and usually sensationalized cases of blacks committing violence against whites. It almost seems that the media, controlled by whites, are in the business of protecting whites as a group from any antisocial stigma.

The media's portrayal of drug abuse is another example. Although 85 percent of illicit drug users are white, local television news will usually show blacks or footage of police raiding homes in the black community.

I once appeared on a televised panel on drug abuse on KQED, a San Francisco PBS affiliate. After the predictable taped introduction to the program, in which police were shown raiding black homes in search of crack – some of these "raids" are staged, incidentally – the host, Spencer Michels, guided the police and members of the city's black community through the usual entertaining back and forth about the problem of crack in the black community.

I asked Michels why he didn't do a more original drug program during which he could interview bankers who were engaged in money laundering, since money laundering, not petty street sales, is what drives the drug market. I also said that television ought to do more to cover the white middle class' role in the drug epidemic instead of relying on the clichéd police versus the black community show. (This exchange was cut from the program.)

Michels told me, sarcastically, that if I could find a money launderer he'd be glad to have him on. All he had to do was visit California's Lompoc federal prison. There are a handful of money launderers there.

Sometimes one gets the impression that white reporters suffer from a cognitive dysfunction when it comes to reporting about issues pertaining to blacks. I'm not saying that whites can't understand these issues, but since the media seem unmotivated to create newsrooms that "look like America," it behooves some fair-minded journalists and editors to do their homework, instead of relying on stereotypes when covering the black community.

Reed is the author of 15 books, including novels, essays, plays and poetry, and has been nominated for two National Book Awards. His new book of essays, "Airing Dirty Laundry," will be published next month.

Patricia Stevens -- Mimicking the worst
Do you watch local news? If you're like a lot of people I talk with, you're turned off by much of what you see, and you've turned off the television. I think people are being driven away from the set simply because most of the news reported by local stations doesn't affect their lives.

Take a look tonight. You can bet you'll see at least one of the following: violent crime (with close-ups of blood stains); a car, truck or train (take your pick) accident (twisted metal, more blood); an abused dog, cat or duck; a sex scandal (extra points for clergy member, teacher or politician). You get the idea. From city to city, the depressing, demeaning and devastating make up our nightly local news diets.It's apparent to me that too many local news directors are taking their cues from the tabloids, ignoring what matters and stuffing the news with easy titillation. There's a brisk, nationwide traffic in videotape originating from the lurid, flashy WSVN newscasts in Miami, as news managers try to copy that station's style and success.

Why don't they switch on the successes they'll find broadcast in their own markets every day? Have they watched "60 Minutes?" Or "20/20?" Or how about that network news leader, ABC's "World News Tonight?" In my opinion, ABC succeeds in part because it emphasizes the "why" of the news. "Why" is the most neglected "W" of the five great journalistic "Ws." It's that extra step that gives the viewer some perspective, and it's not always depressing.
ABC's "American Agenda" segment could easily be adapted at the local level. (How about an "Ohio Agenda" or a "New Jersey Agenda?") Sometimes the ABC segment actually soars with its lyrical quality. It takes a look at life as we live it – sometimes complex and gritty, sometimes simple and delightful.
Then there's ABC's "Person of the Week," those weekly vignettes of people – sometimes famous, oftentimes not. But they all make a difference with their lives. People like that exist in every city in the world. Stories like this should be done at the local level.

These successful network programs also carry a style and personality that makes us want to watch. The great broadcasters have always had that, from Murrow to Ellerbee to Kuralt. Local stations have people with flair, too. People who can write and produce with style, but who are too often discouraged from using their talents by a rush for 15-second voice-overs and cosmetic live shots. We hear rubrics like, "No picture, no story," or "That's a newspaper story, not good TV." Horsefeathers! Good people can craft "newspaper" stories into effective, important video.

Good production values make television more interesting to watch, but too often local producers let content disappear into a cacophony of MTV-style visuals and noise. Slashing, flashing, booming, but no information. How often do you watch a local television newscast and at the end wonder, "What was that about?" Or did you just feel exhausted and not know why?

Viewers wonder why they seem to be getting news they already know about. In a good many instances, they are. What they're seeing are stories that ran in the morning newspaper. Drop in on almost any morning editorial meeting at a local television news shop and you'll find morning newspapers circled and highlighted with stories that will show up on the evening newscast.

What local news departments desperately need is more enterprise reporting. The problem is, many local television reporters don't have a clue how to investigate a story. I'm not talking Watergate – just knowing what's going on in your city and putting it on the air before it makes it into the papers.

Economic pressures have helped intensify this local rush to ruin. With audiences dropping, with pressure on upper management to maintain profit margins, stations have demanded that fewer people fill more air time. After trying to root out waste and inefficiency, news directors turn to speed and productivity.
Pressured assignment desk editors and reporters go for what's quick and easy – the stuff crackling on the scanner or something they can "hose down" in a hurry.

Do viewers want hosed-downed news? The evidence suggests they'll reach for their remote controls, searching for something else on those 55-plus channels. And local news will be left in a spiral of collapse – quick fixes, screeching teases, dazzling graphics – while their viewers look in vain for a report on what matters to them.

Stevens, who has worked in television news since 1966, was the first woman television news director in the United States. She has also worked as a reporter, anchor, managing editor, executive producer and associate news director. She is currently managing editor for the 15 stations that make up Conus Communications' Rocky Mountain region.

Todd Gitlin--Money talks
The scandal of local news is twofold. First, it "works": It makes financial officers hum with delight. Second, it isn't considered scandalous by the responsible parties. That is, in the light, or dark, of their degraded standards, a wave of the hand toward big numbers is the beginning and end of the conversation.
When I say local news "works," I mean, of course, that it does what its proprietors want and expect it to do: It delivers big audiences. It does this via the recipes dreamed up by consultants – the standard issue Mr. and Ms. weightless anchors indistinguishable from coast to coast, able to look concerned, chipper, urgent and cheerful – in rapid succession ("Now this.."); the state-of-the-art technology, the videocams and uplinks; the logos, the jaunty theme music, the hairdos and color combos. The resulting numbers please advertisers, which in turn pleases management.

The local news accomplishes this sequence of pleasures efficiently and reliably – reliably enough, anyway, to convince the top guns that there is no point tampering with a winning formula except in a formulaic way. "Dope busts tonight." "Celebrity trapped in fire donates liver." "Cheers" bloopers. Weather giggles. Happy talk. Rule One: Never be at a loss for pictures. Rule Two: Never be at a loss for words. Mindlessness abhors dead air and loves video wallpaper. (Just what kind of pictoral jolt is supplied by the flames of the 1,001st fire anyway?)

Sure, there are exceptions. For example, I've heard excellent reports from San Francisco-Oakland's Fox affiliate, KTVU. I recollect vividly the moment when the anchor segued from a report on President Reagan's Bitburg visit to a report on who the SS were. ("History!" as George Bush would have said.) In some major metropolitan areas, there's a bit of a market niche, to use the repellent term of the business, for stories that last more than a minute-fifteen, and periodically one of the franchises sucks in its collective breath and goes for a walk – usually short – along the high road. But that reliable strumpet commerce is invariably strutting her stuff at the next crossroads.

Television journalists will say, with a wring of the hands followed by a knowing look and a roll of the eyes, that they themselves would prefer to go down in history as the local version of Edward R. Murrow. But, alas and alack, there's no commercial alternative to the quick and the lurid, because, let's face it, sufficient numbers of masses keep offering up their delectable eyeballs for the rental of advertisers.

Who knows if the more probing, more analytical, more risky sort of coverage might, given enough time, make money? But in television, the point is not to make money but to make more money – more than the other guy, more than you used to make, more than you feared you might make. And this is the real scandal: There are no sufficiently powerful countervailing motives. That is why "the system works."

In television, as in football, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." That this is the rule in local television is a comment not only on the power of the idea of winning but on the weakness of other passions in American culture.

I had a visit once from a former student who'd been one of the sharpest I'd known. As a college senior, he had displayed every interest in critical thought. Now he found himself the assistant news director at a network affiliate in a major city, and he confessed to me, with some embarrassment, that he hadn't read a serious book in years. (His shame was the most touching and impressive thing about him.) The reason, he said, was that he "didn't have time" – a claim difficult to assess literally without an intimate time survey, and yet a claim that requires a certain sympathy. The fast track is no place for reflection. Stand still and think, and somebody gains on you.

A friend of mine has spent more than two decades in local television news. His career is considered distinguished. He's won awards. But if he weren't there, personable and "believable," wearing lightly his knowledge of the world of cops and criminals, someone else – most likely somebody less knowledgeable – would happily substitute.

Naturally, I trust my friend to "get a story right" more than I trust someone I don't know. But he observes that the longer he works there, the faster he talks and the shorter his attention span gets. He doesn't trust his mind anymore, and rightly so. What he has come to value in a story, now, is a look on a hostage's face or the face of a bereaved mother. He knows there is something limited about the "flash 'n' trash" that is his bread and butter.

The thousands of wannabes who would "kill" for his job are waiting in line to leapfrog over his hard-earned knowledge of how institutions work and jump directly to his savoring of the moments of pain. In my experience, they don't particularly care what he has given up to "get" what's "real." They can't wait for the chance to go for the gold.

Gitlin, professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote about media coverage of President Clinton in our April issue. He is the author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage."

Paul Steinle -- Production over coverage
While the public is looking more and more to television news for local coverage, some local television news departments have veered off course from the mission stated in the Communications Act of 1934: serve "the public convenience, interest and necessity..."

Despite television's role as an entertainment medium to create a showplace for advertisers, the 10 percent to 15 percent of a week's broadcast time devoted to news remained fairly sacrosanct until the 1980s.

All stations sought the highest ratings, but most stories were held to high standards and coverage included a broad mix of breaking news and enterprise reporting.
But the fractionalization of the viewing audience by cable, the flattening of retail business growth and the deregulation of broadcasting have conspired to tilt the balance at some stations toward a heightened concern for ratings and a decreased concern for quality content.

In too many cities, local television news is characterized by a degradation of reporting and a marked narrowing of the local news agenda.
Certain formats and technologies have colluded to undercut quality. "Live at Five," pioneered by WNBC in the 1980s in New York City, replaced traditional news topics with a stream of celebrity interviews and lifestyle features, blurring the concept of local news content. Tabloid television significantly lowered the standards for good taste by focusing on the underside of society. And the extensive use of live remotes on local television news shifted the assignment desk's emphasis from news coverage to news production.

Television news looks great. News production keeps improving and the technology now allows for the transmission of live, compelling, breaking news. But these advancements have rarely been accompanied by an equally ambitious commitment to enterprise reporting.

Crime is a legitimate concern in most American cities, so the coverage of crime and crime-fighting certainly addresses viewers' interests. But often crime coverage has become an obsession.

Have news staffs been so reduced in the current battle to save dollars that they no longer can get the job done? Breaking news events are announced on the police radio. Enterprise journalism, however, requires planning, foresight, and some digging. Enterprise reporting also compels a news organization to determine its community's concerns and to produce stories addressing those concerns.

Besides the lack of enterprise reporting and a clear agenda, there are other criteria for evaluating local news:

1. Quality control. Does anyone fact-check copy before it goes on the air or critique weak stories after they are broadcast?

2. What are the standards for live remotes? Are live reports as well-edited and well-written as taped field reports? Are remotes given extra time, because they are live, without regard to their news value?

3. Are stations hyping the news? Are promos and teases promising much more than the stories deliver?

4. Do anchors know the city, its people, or the area's powerbrokers? Do they know enough to guide viewers through an election night or a major disaster?

5. Where do news-coverage dollars flow? Did local stations send a reporter to Waco to cover the Branch Davidian standoff? Is there really a local angle when stations pull stories off a satellite?

6. Do reporters report the news or spout speculation? Do reporters have enough time to research stories and ask questions? Are they telling viewers what apparently happened, rather than what they can confirm really happened?

7. Does the assignment editor know the community? Did the editor work the streets as a reporter? Does the editor understand local interests and local mores?

8. Are stations production-driven or news-driven? Are stations more concerned about how a story looks than what it says?

A few years ago that little old lady in the Wendy's commercial raised the relevant question: "Where's the beef?"

It's impressive to watch breaking news from just about anywhere, festooned with electronic graphics and video effects. But the fundamental issue is how broadcasters are filling the electronic bun.

If stations are not satisfying their viewers' growing appetite for local news, their credibility will decline, and their mission will go unfulfilled.
The public deserves better – and so do television journalists.

Steinle is director of the journalism and photography program at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is a former president of United Press International and the Financial News Network.

Joseph C. Goulden -- No investigative reporting
As a rookie city reporter for the Dallas News in the late 1950s, I shared the disdain my print colleagues had for television journalists, considering these creatures preferable to stray dogs only in that none knowingly harbored fleas. My memory is vivid of a 1960 press conference at which the Dallas district attorney, Henry Wade, announced the arrests of two con men who bought small burial insurance companies, looted them of their cash assets and then drove them into financial ruin. A television reporter listened to the rest of us for perhaps half an hour, then asked Wade a question that glibly summarized what had been discussed. His report that evening featured his seemingly incisive question.

What did not get onto the air was what the reporter asked me as the press conference broke up: "I got here a little late. Could you tell me, in a couple of sentences, what this situation is all about?" I did, and I heard my answer parroted back in his introduction to his piece.

So is local television news any better three-plus decades later? Oh, perhaps. The laws of probability dictate that television news has found some journalists blessed with qualities other than a photographable face and a Ted Baxter voice. At its best, local television news can be very good. For example, WFAA in Dallas is generally credited with the first substantive reporting on the savings and loan crisis. During the blizzard of 1979, I went gaga over Susan King of the old WTOP in Washington, D.C., for her marathon coverage of a storm that crippled the city. (She is now an anchor at WJLA in Washington.) Tom Sherwood of WRC does the best city hall reporting of any journalist in Washington, and his colleague Jack Cloherty knows the kooks and zanies of our city.
But my judgment is based on the area that I know best from my own experience, investigative reporting. In recent years I was asked to testify as an expert witness in perhaps a dozen court cases involving local television news. I did so in several that indicate a flaw that local news shares with the networks: starting a story with a premise, and ignoring contrary evidence.

In 1990, I testified in a case involving a San Antonio station that aired a series attacking a heart surgeon for doing unnecessary and bad surgery. The physician claimed that a disgruntled employee had targeted him and enlisted the television station to do her dirty work. I was dubious until I heard an outtake of an interview with a family member of one of the supposed victims. Once the interview ended, she asked if she should hire a lawyer. Someone on the crew said not until the story aired because they were trying to "sneak up on" the doctor.

The station had worked on the story for almost three months, covertly filming the doctor as he drove around town and visited the local airport. The footage had the grainy character of FBI surveillance photos. But the station did not try to interview the doctor until late in the afternoon just before the first story aired. He was out of town, and could not respond to his accusers. Several hours later, when the report aired, his medical career was in ruins. There was much more to the case, but the jurors' collective ears seemed to perk when they heard the "sneak up on" quote. The millions of dollars awarded to the doctor was eloquent testimony of the jurors' opinion of the station's professionalism.

In another case, a Boston station had accused a former New England college president of illegally obtaining building materials, spare parts for airplanes and other supplies from a federal surplus program. The evidence suggested that rival successors for the college presidency stirred the story. When I read through the documents that had been available to the station, it was obvious that the reporter had ignored repeated admonitions that he was confusing two federal programs, and that the president had obtained materials for his college in a way that was ethical and legal.

The case was settled out of court in June 1992. The amount awarded to the college president was secret, but the lawyer seemed pleased when he called to tell me of the resolution.

I constantly read criticisms, in AJR and elsewhere, of the "decline" of investigative reporting at local stations. But did such a creature ever exist? Surely one can cite examples of good work by individual reporters here and there. But given the overall record, it is easy to understand why a significant number of station owners have come to realize that they cannot trust the quality of work done by their reporters, hence their unwillingness to invest in further so-called investigative journalism.As a Jacksonian democrat, I feel that the American populace has a good deal of respect for factual reporting. What does the sorry state of television news mean in a practical sense? When traveling, I have a rule of thumb about newspapers: Will they get me through breakfast? Extrapolating to local television news, I seldom find anything that interests me beyond the weather and sports scores.

Goulden, formerly Washington bureau chief of the Philadelphia Inquirer, is director of media analysis for the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media and the author of 16 books, including "The Superlawyers" and "Fit to Print," which is about the New York Times.

Howard Kurtz -- The tabloid style
When I lived in New York, I was often transfixed – and nauseated – by the nightly televised parade of murders, muggings, shootings, stabbings, rapes, burglaries and raging fires. Despite my status as a hard-boiled journalist, I eventually began to feel, well, less safe. Death and danger seemed to be lurking around every corner, and the underlying message was unmistakable: This could happen to you.

New York, of course, is a tabloid town where sensationalism is woven into the news culture. But the "Hard Copy" approach to news has now spread to local stations across the country, the latest quick fix for anemic ratings.

After reviewing a week's worth of local newscasts in Miami, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Washington, I found myself bleary-eyed from overexposure to violence, calamity and heart-rending tales of woe. It seemed almost a parody of journalism: bold graphics filling the screen, melodramatic background music, correspondents reporting live from some darkened street corner that the police had vacated hours earlier.

This is not to suggest that crime isn't an important urban story. Nor do I believe that all local stations are going the tabloid route. But it's clear that a growing number of network affiliates are cranking up the volume on violence and sex. To wit:

•"Cops say a schoolteacher tries to give his student a little bit of extra homework – to murder his wife's lover!" says Miami's WSVN, a Fox affiliate.

•"Up next: A pool nearly becomes a death trap for a local toddler. You'll hear about a heroic rescue," says KCBS in Los Angeles.

•"Police may have a new lead in the bizarre case of a murder at a tollway rest stop. They say they want to talk to one of the Winnetka victim's ex-husbands,"
says WBBM, the CBS station in Chicago.

•"A vicious and deadly attack on Long Island. The weapon: a machete," says WWOR, an independent station based in Secaucus, New Jersey.

These stations repeatedly tried to play upon the fear of crime. During a KCBS report about an actress and her boyfriend who wound up killing a gun-waving intruder, the reporter asked a Los Angeles police officer: "What suggestions have you got for people who hear this story and are concerned for their own safety?"

Unfortunately for the station, the cop responded: "It's probably a little hard to draw a moral from this."

Body-bag journalism doesn't require much creativity (long shot of crime scene, tight shot of blood on the street, cut to grieving relatives). And in cities where homicide has become an everyday occurrence, it isn't hard to find a drive-by shooting (or a drug bust, or a rape, or a child abuse case) for the top of the broadcast. But hyping such stories night after night presents a distorted picture of the community, creating a sense of anarchy and chaos with precious little context.

Fear and loathing abound. A story on the Pepsi "syringe scare" gave way to one about a woman finding a piece of glass in her spareribs. A report on police brutality in New Jersey turned out to be about one black teenager who said he was slapped by a white officer. A piece on a Chicago flasher was based on the claims of one woman who said a man made indecent suggestions to her daughter.

The hard core stuff was rounded out by deadly spiders and snakebites, mysterious chemicals, workers buried alive, endless replays of the Waco assault, floods, tornadoes, mudslides, sinkholes and plane crashes. Such fare is often delivered in breathless tones by what Chicago Tribune columnist James Warren calls "your basic TV airheads who wouldn't know how to report a fire."

Just when the audience might have been tempted to hit the clicker, it was time for video highlights from around the country. St. Louis: A boy dies in a sewage treatment tank. Tampa: The trial of two whites accused of setting a black man on fire is moved to another location. Memphis: A convicted child molester is on probation. Florida: Teenage vandals trash a school. California: Ice falls through a roof and narrowly misses a 6-year-old boy. (That was one night's roundup on WWOR's "9 Watch" segment during its 10 p.m. newscast.)

Defenders of the tabloid approach, such as former KCBS News Director John Lippman, say it is an attempt to humanize the crime problem for a working class audience that lives under far more harrowing conditions than elitist media critics. There are plenty of other choices, they say, for people who want talking head news about school board meetings and congressional debates.

Even when judged in that light, however, the "Action News" approach seems too inflammatory and too fleeting to provide much understanding of our violent culture. And people soon tire of it, if sagging ratings in several cities are any yardstick.

It's only fair to note that tabloid news isn't all blood and guts. In one rather comical KCBS report, "Action News" reporter Judd McIlvain banged on the door of a man allegedly running a credit card scam. He wasn't home. The camera zoomed in on McIlvain's van, where he received a call from the perpetrator on his mobile phone and declared in outraged tones:

"It's just too bad, is that what you're saying? Shame on you! Shame..on..you! For heaven's sake! Why don't you get a real job and quit ripping people off? Shame on you!"

Shame, indeed.

Kurtz, the Washington Post's media reporter, is the author of the recent book "Media Circus: The Trouble with America's Newspapers."