ABSTRACT

Jessica finds that a number of friends at the paper share her concerns about the local news. One friend, a campus anti-poverty activist and criminology major, confides that four months earlier he had met with the news directors of the three major television stations in the city. They listened politely to his complaints, he says, but in the end they did nothing. “The need to attract large numbers of viewers for advertisers obviously exceeds their desire to be publicly responsible,” he suggests. But Jessica is determined to go beyond what her friend has done. She decides to start a public advocacy group to put public pressure on the stations to change local news.