Florida Hoteliers Send a Message to Fox Affiliate : Television: Angered at crime-driven news coverage, management has blocked access to the station in some 3,000 rooms in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West.

In at least 10 of South Florida’s major tourist hotels, guests can order room service, sun themselves in poolside lounge chairs, and sip tall drinks topped with tropical fruit and tiny umbrellas. But they can’t watch the evening news on Channel 7.

In what is being called a protest of WSVN-TV’s often-sensational, crime-driven news coverage, the hotels’ management has blocked access to the Fox Network affiliate in some 3,000 rooms in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West.

The blackout of Channel 7, labeled censorship by some critics, has focused national attention once again on Florida’s image as a crime-plagued vacation spot. Since October, 1992, nine foreign visitors to Florida have been slain in a spate of random violence. Last month a group of Norwegian tourists was robbed after their shuttle bus was hijacked at gunpoint from the Miami airport.

The hoteliers charge that Channel 7, which often leads its 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts with breathless reports from crime scenes, distorts the reality of South Florida and scares visitors.

“It’s body bags and blood, and the more blood the better it is,” said Victor Farkas, who has pulled the plug on all of WSVN’s programming in his two North Miami Beach hotels. “It does no good for the community.”

Tim Brigham, a spokesman for the 420-room Doral Ocean Beach Resort, said, “We’re trying to send a message to Channel 7. The other stations don’t present news in such a violent, tabloid way.”

Robert Leider, executive vice president and general manager of Sunbeam Television Corp., owner of WSVN, said the blackout would not change Channel 7’s newscasts. “It is our job to cover the news and we will not censor our newscast to placate the hotel industry,” he said.

Ironically, according to a University of Miami study released Wednesday, WSVN has cut back substantially on the percentage of crime news, at least in the 6 p.m. newscast. During a week monitored last November, crime stories made up 49% of the 30-minute newscast, twice as much as any other station. But in the week of May 23, crime news dropped to 31.7%, virtually the same as that in the newscast of ratings-leader WPLG-TV, the ABC affiliate owned by the Washington Post.

Joel Cheatwood, the Sunbeam vice president who oversees the news, denied WSVN deliberately has cut back on crime coverage. He added, however, that his station, as well as others in Miami, “have made a concerted effort to provide more context, and be more sensitive to reporting crime after crime.”

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The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau has taken no official position on the hotel blackout. But spokesman Mayco Villafana was certainly sympathetic.

“The hoteliers’ frustration has boiled over at the way things are covered,” said Villafana. “Channel 7 is giving the impression that these acts of violence are a reflection of the entire community, and to me this is not just. There is no perspective, no depth to their reporting.”

Indeed, WSVN seems to like nothing better than to open its newscasts with a live, breaking story, often the bloody aftermath of a liquor store shoot-out or a traffic fatality. Recordings of tortured emergency 911 calls are popular. Anchors Rick Sanchez and Kelly Mitchell, along with several of the station’s reporters, are also known for a narrative style that charitably could be called over-dramatic.

“Sure, it’s everything the critics say it is--sensationalistic, lubricious and irresponsibly gruesome,” Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote this week. “If Jeffrey Dahmer lived here, Channel 7 undoubtedly would be his favorite station.”

The movement to shield the visitors from the more lurid goings-on in South Florida was begun last month by Farkas. Guests of his Thunderbird and the Chateau by the Sea cannot watch “Melrose Place,” “The Simpsons” or “America’s Most Wanted.”

Then Thomas F. Hewitt, president of the Continental Cos., owners of Miami’s posh Grand Bay Hotel and six other area hotels, said he would join the protest by blacking out just the news.

Hewitt said he had communicated personally with Sanchez, asking for changes in WSVN’s broadcast and telling the anchorman that he had “reached the breaking point.” Hewitt suggested Channel 7 redesign its newscast so that it would more resemble rival WCIX Channel 6, a CBS-owned affiliate. In May, WCIX announced a “family sensitive” news policy in which violent footage is withheld from the 6 p.m. news.