Testimony / ONE PERSON’S VIEW OF LOCAL TV NEWS : ‘The Bottom Line Is Also Tied to Credibility’

Sherrie Mazingo worked for nine years as a producer, news writer and deputy bureau chief for NBC in New York and Atlanta. She is chair of the Broadcast Journalism Sequence, School of Journalism, USC.

I paid particular attention to a leading local news channel on a recent Monday night. I wrote down every story they did. And I was appalled that the first 11 stories before the commercial break were all dealing with crime and violence.

This is not balanced news presentation. If I was a visitor here and I turned on that newscast, I would get the distinct impression that what goes on in the Los Angeles metro area is all crime and violence-related and that would certainly be a distorted perception.

Within this range of stories, (the newscast) even reached outside of the L.A. area to tell me about some inmate in Florida. One had to wonder what the heck does that have to do with me and why is that news and why is it the third story in their lineup?

Yes, there’s something to be said for presenting related stories, but to do it with this many stories and to make it the whole top of the newscast before the break is outrageous, unbalanced and unfair.

Something terrible has happened to this industry. In the L.A. television market in particular, we are seeing more and more stories on local television news that have an emphasis on crime and violence. And such presentations must be instilling unnecessary fears in the minds of some, if not many, residents.

It has been demonstrated over and over through research that if you have a cumulative presentation on any given topic to which viewers are consistently exposed, it leads people to believe that this must be the way things really are.

Is it the case that if you lead an ordinary life and go about your business on a daily basis, within a given period of time you will witness a crime, a violent incident, or you will be a victim of one? Is this is the only kind of activity that goes on here that is newsworthy?

I don’t think it means either of those, and yet by continuing to focus on and emphasize crime and violence as it occurs in Los Angeles, by devoting an excessive amount of attention to this, it is exactly the impression given to viewers.

I work at USC in South-Central L.A. and I live at the other end of South-Central and I drive through South-Central six to seven days a week. I was at USC when the civil disturbance broke out. And even driving home that day I was not as afraid as I am today when there is no immediate threat. What is operative here is my perception that there is a threat--not from my experience, but from what television is telling me about the environment out there.

I think this also feeds into racial and ethnic and cultural stereotypes and misconceptions. It’s not just black males. It’s Hispanic individuals, it’s people coming from different cultures. There are other news stories about these same classes of individuals that are not being presented on our local television news. To think that the only thing that makes these people interesting and informative is if they are engaged in some kind of criminal activity or if they’re victims is terribly erroneous thinking.

The broadcast majors here at the School of Journalism produce a half-hour weekly television news magazine program that airs over 19 cable outlets throughout Southern California. In our programs we do stories on people of varying racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds within the Los Angeles area.

For example, in connection with the City Council’s consideration of whether street vendors should be licensed, we told a lot about the background of these people--where they’re from, why they’re street vendors, why the street vendor culture seems to be limited to only a few particular groups of people. It’s informative; it’s telling another story.

Another example: When I came to L.A. 10 years ago, Watts was predominantly black and had been for a long time. Watts today is predominantly Hispanic. I bet nine out of 10 people don’t know that. I have not seen that story.

It has nothing to do with some gang running around Watts, it has nothing to do with some drive-by shooting in Watts. But local TV news will go out and do hit-and-miss reporting on drive-by shootings, on gang incidents, murders and this-and-that and the other. But they won’t give me a background story that has meaning and interest to me as a resident of Los Angeles.

What this industry needs to do is to turn this around. If they want to focus and emphasize the bottom line, there has got to be some rapid realization that the bottom line is also tied to credibility, to viewers’ perceptions of the integrity of a news organization and the responsible presentation of news and information. If the industry keeps going in this direction, we will increasingly see viewers turning off those presentations.

TV news seems to have strayed greatly from a focus of responsible news presentation. There are many reasons for that. First, we’re seeing more of the money guys coming into editorial positions, as opposed to people who previously came from news backgrounds exclusively. And we are seeing an explosion in the technology affecting presentation and distribution.

Technology shifts the focus and emphasis from solid news gathering and presentation. News programs are going “live” almost at the drop of a hat on the most meaningless stories. What is the rationale for going live over, say, some guy who might have been the victim of a carjacking at a gas station in the Valley. You have a reporter at the scene, doing a stand-up, saying, “Frank and Jane, right here just a few hours ago, Bill Porter, 57, of Van Nuys was a victim of”--what is the point of that?

We do it because the technology is there and we have not learned how to make the technology coexist reasonably with the central focus of news presentation. We don’t know how to make the technology supplement or complement the news rather than drive it.

We’ve gotten technology crazy. It’s skycam. It’s satellite technology. It’s doing it faster than anyone else. That’s letting technology drive the wheels of news. It’s leading us to have an emphasis on negative stories.

I’d like to suggest that people who want to do something about this do what I do. When I see something that bothers me, I pick up the phone and call the newsroom. I usually ask to speak to the news director and/or the executive producer. Readers and viewers should also write to the general manager, to the news director, to the editor of publications like The Times and the Daily News about what they are seeing on local television news that may concern them.