SECTION: Part A; Page 1; National Desk
LENGTH: 1912 words
HEADLINE: JOURNALISTS UNDER FIRE FOR COVERAGE OF VIOLENT CRIMES;
MEDIA: IN AN AGE OF 24-HOUR NEWS, SHOCKING TONES AND CONTENT EVOKE
FEAR AND TABLOID VALUES, CRITICS SAY.
BYLINE: JOSH GETLIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEW YORK
BODY:
Once again, a gunman's rampage has scarred California, and as America tries
to make sense of
the violence, the news media are under fire.
Lamenting the voyeuristic coverage of an attack that shocked the nation's
conscience, some critics
are blasting journalists for turning yet another gun-wielding psychopath
into a household name. "These
persons yearn for publicity," writes one, "and the press, while reporting
the essential facts, has a
responsibility to deny them the gratification of instant celebrity."
The complaint may sound familiar--but the year was 1975 and a New York
Times columnist was
angered that the Time and Newsweek covers featured Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme,
who had tried to
assassinate President Ford. From the White House and Congress came denunciations
of a
violence-prone media that was out of control.
It's an old concern, yet one that has taken on new urgency in an age of
24-hour "crisis television."
While few doubt the obligation of journalists to cover breaking news, such
as the recent shootings at
a Granada Hills community center, many believe today's voracious media
pander to tabloid news
values and spread fear--instead of providing a context for violent crimes
by reporting why something
frightening happened or how unusual it may be.
Journalists, critics say, are adept at pointing fingers when violence shocks
America--at gun
manufacturers, at Hollywood entertainment, at the Internet and video games.
But they are not so
eager to examine their own backyard, even as social science offers evidence
that too much exposure
to violent news images can lead to cynicism, a numbness to crime and even
paranoia in some
viewers.
"When you bombard people with frightening pictures, it creates a sense
that things are out of
control--a contagion of violence in the mind of people that is at odds
with the reality of the world,
which is that violent crime has been dropping in America," said Robert
Lifton, professor of
psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "People
should feel safer. But
you really wouldn't know it from the news."
News media violence takes up more hours than ever before: Beginning with
the Gulf War, all-news
cable channels and the three networks have inaugurated marathon coverage
of breaking news,
including crimes, that stretch sometimes for days at a time. During the
recent day-trader shootings in
Atlanta, for example, CNN ran live, commercial-free coverage for five straight
hours.
Some defend the obligations of journalists to tell people the truth, no
matter how jarring. "Much of the
criticism of violence in the news is a red herring because it's the responsibility
of the news media to
tell us what's happening in the world, whether we find the news pleasant
or not," said Barbara
Cochran, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Assn.
Yet others say too much coverage is dominated by an "if it bleeds, it leads"
philosophy. They suggest
that news directors, believing viewers are drawn to crime stories, cater
to them for purely economic
reasons.
Amid the debate, there is little expectation that media managers will make
any sustained effort to
reduce the number of crime stories they cover. Reform proposals surface
from time to time, most
recently when Brill's Content, a magazine that covers the media, proposed
a code of decency for
reporters interviewing crime victims. Yet most local news broadcasts have
enjoyed ratings success
with their traditional approach, and coverage of blockbuster crime stories
generally helps cable
ratings too. The competitive environment makes unilateral restraint difficult.
There are, however, a handful of TV stations and newspapers trying to moderate
the tone and
content of their coverage. Newspapers like the Chicago Sun-Times have kept
stories of high school
shootings off their front pages to avoid alarming children. At KVUE-TV
in Austin, Texas, news
officials are in the fourth year of a program that requires crime stories
to meet guidelines of relevance
before they can be aired.
For the most part, however, crime news continues to dominate the media.
A recent survey by the
Center for Media and Public Policy in Washington showed that while homicides
declined by 13% in
America from 1990 to 1995, the number of crime stories on the three network
evening news shows
skyrocketed by 336%--a figure that excludes all stories related to the
O.J. Simpson case. Surveys by
the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Rocky Mountain Media Watch
suggest that the
average dose of mayhem and violence on any given night of a local TV news
show ranges from 22%
to 41%.
None of those studies takes into account the latest twist in news programming:
that three all-news
cable channels can now cover a crime story anywhere in the world nonstop,
whether there is news to
report or not. As TV cameras race to the scene of the next shooting, there
has been a steady decline
in the amount of TV foreign news coverage in this country or of national
issues considered less
alluring.
"In the absence of other thoughtful stories, it's obvious that blood, guts,
crime and fire will rush in to
fill the void of news programming," said Orville Schell, dean of the UC
Berkeley Graduate School of
Journalism. "And this can have a demoralizing effect, not only on the audience
but on the journalists
who keep recycling the same news."
While there is no direct correlation between watching crime stories on
TV and the commission of a
violent act, social scientists have compiled hundreds of studies over the
last 40 years showing that
prolonged exposure to TV violence, whether fictional or through news, can
create dangerous
attitudes.
"The exposure to TV violence from infancy on leads not so much to imitation
as intimidation," said
George Gerbner, a professor of behavioral psychology at the Annenberg School
of Communications
in Philadelphia. "It leads to what we call a 'mean world syndrome,' a feeling
of vulnerability and
insecurity among people whose fears may not be justified."
In one study, researcher L. Rowell Huesmann of the University of Michigan
detailed the effect of
television violence on boys who were tracked in 1960 at the age of 8 and
at subsequent intervals to
the age of 30. The children who watched more television violence than others
in the study grew up to
become more aggressive, according to the report.
Others point to data that people who are already disturbed, have poor impulse
control or are angry
may be inspired to mimic what they see on TV programs. Experts stress that
only a handful of people
may be vulnerable to such suggestion. "But even though this is a minority
of people, it can have an
impact on the rest of us," said Aletha Huston, professor of child development
at the University of
Texas at Austin.
With distressing regularity, the same violent images fill our screens and
front pages: The schoolyard
vigil that continues for days after a shooting; the microphones shoved
in the faces of stunned
survivors, who later feel that their privacy has been violated; the macabre
deja vu as TV cameras
swarm to the sight of the next rampage.
In today's superheated news marketplace, reporters often pile on at the
scene of a violent crime,
lending the live coverage, in particular, a grotesque, circus-like quality.
At times, the media's behavior
has provoked angry reactions. In Littleton, Colo., school district leaders
who were dismayed by
coverage of the April massacre imposed strict guidelines on reporters covering
the students' return to
Columbine High last month, including requirements that the media not show
injured students and that
victims' families be treated with compassion and respect.
"There's a potential certainly in the news media's coverage of stories
to strike fear into folks who
should not be so fearful, due to situations that are, in many cases, isolated
incidents," said Eason
Jordan, CNN's president of news gathering and international networks. "If
people sit around and
watch violent news coverage for many hours or days on end, they won't necessarily
get an accurate
picture of what's going on in society."
Jordan said CNN doesn't try to scare anyone, but he conceded that hours
of marathon coverage
create special problems. In Granada Hills, for example, viewers shared
the sense of a chaotic,
unpredictable story changing by the minute. There were sporadic shots of
police hunting for a
suspect; viewers saw repeated shots of children being led hand-in-hand
to safety, with scant news
about the victims. At one point, in the absence of any hard data, a network
medical expert in New
York speculated on the damage that might have been done by bullets to a
5-year-old victim.
"These days, a violent story on the news has as many legs as a centipede,"
said cultural critic Todd
Gitlin. "The endless repetition factor keeps coverage going. The 24-hour
saturation factor transforms
the way violent content can fill up and dominate the news."
But that's just the price of doing business in a democracy, answer many
media leaders. Cochran
points to a 1998 survey for the Radio and Television News Directors Assn.,
which produced
encouraging results for an industry worried about its image.
In the survey, more than 66% rated their local news shows as good or excellent,
and 74% gave
similar marks to the way their stations covered local crime news. However,
residents of the nation's
top 25 media markets said they felt local news spent too much time covering
crime.
That concern has prompted TV news directors in several markets to experiment
with a less violent
approach to local news coverage. While none of these so-called family-oriented
stations have
reported a surge in ratings, few say they are losing viewers.
"I wanted to try this new approach based on my past experiences as a TV
journalist, because I was
dismayed by the amount of crime news I was using to fill up broadcasts
in Florida and North
Carolina," said Cathy McFeaters, news director of KVUE in Austin. "I never
thought about it much
because it was a formula, and after a while all the crime stories ran into
each other."
In Austin, McFeaters and others covered crime stories as before but aired
them only if they met key
guidelines. These included a determination that a crime story involved
a threat to public safety, would
affect children, required people to take action--like evacuating a neighborhood--or
had a significant
social impact.
In most TV markets, however, it's business as usual.
Minutes after news broke of the Granada Hills shootings, Rabbi Lawrence
Goldmark, acting director
of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, got a call alerting him--from
friends in Israel who had
been watching the story on CNN. Rushing to the scene, he offered words
of healing to the
community and also got a crash course in how the media cover a crime story.
"I thought reporters out there tried to cover this with sensitivity and
professionalism," said the rabbi,
who heads Temple Beth Ohr in La Mirada. "But for me the real news story
is always going to be:
Why did this happen? What can we learn from it? And if it's going to happen
again, how can a
community protect itself?"
Ultimately, he added, solutions rest with the American people. "If TV stations
were to be inundated
by viewers saying, 'We don't want all these crime stories!' they would
stop. In a democracy, the
people have the final vote--with their remotes."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: (A2) VIOLENCE--News media coverage of violence, such as
the recent
attack at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills, where children were
evacuated, left, has come
under criticism. A3 PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID BOHRER / Los Angeles Times
LANGUAGE: English
LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1999