Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 16, 1994 TAG: 9407190027
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAVID ZURAWIK THE BALTIMORE SUN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A gunman who kidnapped his girlfriend then shot her and a policeman lay face-down, dead on the greasy pavement of Interstate Highway 95 after a high-speed chase. It was a tableau of crime and punishment tailor-made for local television news.
But one Baltimore station - WMAR, an NBC affiliate, - did resist using the pictures of John Porter's body on June 14. The station's decision marked the arrival in Baltimore of family sensitive news, a new brand of gore-free TV journalism being practiced in more than a dozen cities and stirring heated debate coast to coast.
It's a debate that could have a profound effect on the kind of crime images local TV newscasters show and, in turn, how viewers see their communities.
Proponents of family sensitive news say it is a responsible reaction from broadcasters to widespread public complaints that local television news is too bloody and too full of graphic images. But many broadcasters say it's only a cynical marketing gimmick aimed at higher ratings. Some media critics fear its potential for sanitizing the news.
"Family sensitive TV news is a kind of modern articulation of the old family newspaper, except now it's put in ideological terms," says Everette E. Dennis, author of "The Media Society" and executive director of Gannett's Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York.
"It used to be that when you wrote for a family newspaper, you never used any language that would be offensive to any member of the family," says Dennis. "That was virtually the case with every newspaper in the country until 15 or 20 years ago. That notion has broken down. But it's come back to television news as a response to violent programming, ... and it's almost a kind of censorship that's now going on. Self-censorship is a better word."
Not so, says John Lansing, the news director at Minneapolis' WCCO-TV, the top-rated station in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market and one of the most widely praised local news operations in the country. Lansing coined the term "family sensitive" and first put it into practice in January. It was done, he says, in response to a formula of television news that insiders describe as, "If it bleeds, it leads." Such a philosophy propels the story with the bloodiest video to the top of the newscast.
"We do restrict our use of graphic video images," says Lansing. "But what family sensitive news is really concerned with is an attempt to answer the question: How can we cover crime more effectively without relying on the easy-to-get and -use pictures? We're eliminating graphic video, not eliminating stories."
In addition to Minneapolis and Baltimore, variations of the family sensitive formula are used at TV stations in Miami; Seattle; Pittsburgh; Denver; Oklahoma City; Tucson, Ariz.; Sacramento, Calif.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Charlotte, N.C.; Asheville, N.C.; and Harlingen, Texas.
Joe Lewin, general manager of WMAR, - the No. 2-rated station in the Baltimore area's news sweepstakes - does not like the family sensitive label being applied to his station's newscasts. However, two weeks ago he described the concept this way in a series of promotional messages:
"Recently, you may have noticed a change in [the station's] news, and you made the difference. You let us know you thought there was too much violence in the news, and we agreed with you.
"Of course, we'll always bring you complete news coverage, and that can mean pretty tough coverage. But there's a difference now: Crime stories are covered only when justified, and we always look for a positive angle. And shots of graphic violence have no home on this station.
"We're not calling this anything special and have no fancy slogans. But this is an important change, and we want you to know about it."
His competitors see it differently.
"That's family sensitive news," says Gail Bending, news director for WJZ, the city's No. 1-rated news operation. WBAL news director David Roberts and WBFF news director Joe DeFeo agree. WBAL and WBFF are the Nos. 3- and 4-rated local news stations.
"And I'll tell you I hate it," says Roberts. "It gets me mad, because it's a bogus marketing ploy used by consultants for stations that are losing in the ratings. What they're doing is promising to sugarcoat the news."
News consultants, who advise stations on everything from anchor hairdos to a newscast's opening music, rely heavily on focus group research. They are urging clients to get sensitive about crime coverage, they say, because that's what viewers are telling them they want.
by CNB