ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION At a lecture to journalism students at Missouri State University, Linda Ellerbee decried the limitations of television news, noting that when you aim a camera at one person, you aim it away from all of the others. She expanded this argument to producing stories; when a newscast dedicates 30 seconds to a crime story, that’s 30 seconds that can never be allocated to exposing city council corruption. In short, the coverage of daily stories impacts not just what the viewer sees, but also what stories the viewer may have seen.