ABSTRACT
This research started as an effort to understand the political content and effects of local TV news, the top news source for the plurality of Americans. After viewing many hours of tapes from 36 different cities, two things became apparent: The most popular topic was crime, and the subtext of crime news was race. Whatever its intentions, the credo of “If it bleeds, it leads” seemed likely to raise the salience and seeming threat of street crime-drugs, gangs, robberies, and murders (Romer et al., 2003). Because a disproportionate share of easily covered defendants and victims in most cities is African American, the heightened salience and threat seemed likely to have racial meanings for White Americans. It further struck me that the racial messages of local news were remarkably congruent with the theory of modern racism advanced by David Sears and others. Sears argued that although overt beliefs in Blacks’ racial inferiority may have faded, they have been replaced by negative emotions such as fear and resentment as core themes of racial animosity among Whites, as well as by denial that racism remains a problem. Local news seemed tailor-made to stoke precisely those sentiments.
