Crime is a big problem nowadays. It has the potential to shock and capture the interest of the community. It can influence many people’s daily decisions. But do we really need to spend that much time discussing it on our daily news?
These pie charts show the topics covered by four local news stations (WLKY, WHAS, WDRB, and WAVE) over the course of one month. The top chart shows the data recorded this year, and the bottom shows last year’s data. The largest slice of the pie in each chart, the constantly obnoxious piece, represents the amount of time our local news stations spend on crime. This year, crime took up 40.5% of all news stories aired, an increase from last year’s 28%.
Crime is important. Sometimes, crime cases can influence a large portion of our community. However, it should not be the most discussed matter on our local news stations.
On October 23rd and 24th, all the local news stations’ top stories were about the David Camm trial. While it was important to learn the verdict, considering the trial’s controversy on double jeopardy and related topics, that does not excuse the fact that, before the 24th, the Camm trial was featured in basically every segment. On WLKY, Camm stories were featured 8 times in the 10 30-minute segments watched for this study. But Camm was not the only overused crime story. Pawn shop shootings and pastors murdering took precedence over other important topics such as health, economy, social issues, things people need to know.
Citizens do not need to know about crimes unless they are directly related to the crime. It is just that news media has elevated the supposed importance of crime news to the point where everyone wants the scoop on crimes. It’s human nature; if a story is made to be interesting, people will assume it’s important.
Another thing to point out on the charts is that the celebrity fluff percentage has risen as well in a year, going from 6.1% to 8.3%. This is another example of how local news stations are becoming increasingly more populous with their content, airing what they think will capture people's interests.
This blatant negligence of one of the most important principles of journalism is a problem because it makes citizens more uninformed. If people believe that crime stories are important to them, they will watch the crime stories. If they feel like celebrity fluff is what's most important, they will pay more attention to that. Since news media has been recently reinventing what they consider important, locally relevant news, people have been spoonfed new ideas of what they need to know. Since news media is becoming more and more populous as television scrambles to reclaim money lost to the internet, they will report anything that gives them money. They’ve drilled the idea of what’s important into people’s heads just to collect their money from it.
This is unfortunate because many people still rely on the local news to get news they need to know. Not many families have a newspaper subscription anymore, so some people just catch the news on their TV before heading to work. If there’s only crime and fluff on the TV, important things will be missed out on.
Another unfortunate picking at the “local relevance” yardstick is the fact that this year, only 8.2% of news was government-related, down 2% from last year’s data. Last year was the presidential election, so that percentage makes sense. But the national government shut down when this data was being taken and yet, government was talked about less than celebrity fluff was.
No one really needs to know about celebrity lives, or about crimes on the other side of town. It’s just information fed to everyone with the impression of it being important. “David Camm Murder Trial Almost Ended!” was a top story. It was a useless reminder and it annoyed people who wanted actual, important news to no end.
In conclusion, local news stations are spending too much time stressing irrelevant matters in their newscasts, thus breaking the principle of “make the important interesting” and the yardstick of “local relevance”.
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