ABSTRACT
It is no secret to those who pay even a marginal amount of attention to news programs that local television news frequently hypes stories about car crashes, fires, violent crime, dangers that are hazardous to your health, and bizarre tricks such as pigs swimming. In short, local television news is notorious for sensationalist coverage of frivolous and serious topics alike. Much of this reputation is earned. For example, a San Diego affiliate ran the following health segment on its late evening newscast in October 2002: “[Anchor]: If you are a gym-aholic, you may want to think about cutting back. New research suggests that working out too much could increase your chance of cancer. That’s right.” Not only did the station fail to put the report into context by discussing all the known benefits of exercise, medical researchers at the University of Michigan3 had trouble tracing the origin of the story, suggesting at best that the coverage originated from some researchers’ unpublished preliminary findings, which likely did not warrant coverage at all. In another example, in March 2012, a local Philadelphia NBC affiliate devoted at least two stories (more than 4.5 minutes in the first portion of two broadcasts from March 11 and 15) to follow-up coverage of a “coffee attack” in West Philadelphia, where an angry customer allegedly threw “boiling hot coffee on a donut shop worker.” The segments featured video of the attack, commentary from police, exclusive interviews with the suspect’s sister and former landlord, along with close-up shots of
the victim’s bandaged arm. These examples provide just a small taste of the type of coverage frequently lamented by critics of local television news who argue that bad journalism is the result of flawed strategies to “dumb down” content and attract larger audiences. Worst still, evidence suggests that these tactics do not even work.4
