Distortions of the Tabloid Style

Violent crime may be declining in America--the Justice Department says rates are lower than at any time since 1973--but it has become all but impossible to avoid on TV. Witness the coverage of the violent life and death of Andrew Cunanan.

The evidence that TV may be overexposing us was brought home by live coverage of the discovery of Cunanan’s body on a Miami houseboat. The TV networks and local stations turned on the cameras as police surrounded the houseboat just after 4 p.m. Wednesday and remained glued to the scene for the next 3 1/2 hours. Commentators filled the air time with wild speculation about how a gay party animal turned into a suspected serial murderer. Even after 8 p.m., when police finally raided the houseboat and found Cunanan dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, one Miami station continued its coverage (some of it rebroadcasts) for eight hours.

Why the massive coverage? The answer is obvious. Violence is news. Many TV news directors structure their programs based on the ghoulish formula, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And the print press too, even without wall-to-wall coverage capability, often makes a big splash out of major crime.

Russia’s television stations beam even more hours of crime coverage than America’s. An intriguing explanation was put forward by Russian psychoanalyst Sergei Agrachev, who in speaking of his homeland could have been speaking of the United States as well: “Our society is to a large degree in a state of anxiety. This anxiety must be explained in some way. Before, people were frightened of atomic war, and that was actually justified to some degree. Now, our people have come to be afraid of crime. These terrible scenes on TV allow people to say, ‘My fear is understandable.’ ”

To put the best possible face on American TV crime coverage, one can only hope it is serving some social purpose, reassuring us that we live in a society of laws in which the criminal--usually, if not always--is punished.