2004 Annual Report - Local TV Content Analysis

The Project's study found a remarkable consistency in terms of what got covered, a surprising range in terms of quality, an alarming tendency toward one-sidedness and a steady disappearance of enterprise.

In every year of the study, the No. 1 topic on local television news was crime. Over the five years, 24 percent of all stories were about crime - the number ranging from a high of 26 percent in 2002 to a low of 19 percent in 2000. (Some stations clearly go the other way. In 2002, the last year of the study, there were stations where crime represented as little as 5 percent of stories. But these were unusual.)

If crime was the No. 1 topic on local news by more than 2 to 1, what came next? Over the five years, stories about accidents, bizarre events, fires and catastrophes accounted for 12 percent. Taken together, crime, fire accidents and disasters made up 36 percent of all stories.

The next most popular topics were human-interest stories and politics, which each accounted for 10 percent of stories. This was followed by social issues - a category that includes a wide swath of topics such as education and transportation - at 8 percent, and then by business and economic news at 7 percent, although most of these stories were brief updates on Wall Street rather than larger pieces on economic issues. (The study did not attempt to track weather and sports coverage.)

Thus the notion that it has to bleed to lead in local television news is an exaggeration, but it is grounded in some reality. We looked just at lead stories on the 2,400 newscasts studied to test this idea. We found that 39 percent were crime stories, while 13 percent were about disasters or severe weather and 9 percent were about a fairly routine fire or accident, for a total of 61 percent. Local TV news is not dominated by these topics, but it does tend somewhat to lead with them.

Topic Coverage of Local TV News Stories

Topic	Percent of Stories
Crime/trials	24%
Accidents/bizarre events/disasters	12
Politics/government	10
Human interest	10
Social issues	8
Business/economy	7
Culture/civilization	7
Health/consumer	6
Miscellaneous	6
Foreign affairs/defense	5
Science/technology	4

Source: PEJ Local TV News Project.
Weather and sports coverage not counted towards total. Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Story Focus

The study also looked at what aspect of an event a story focused on regardless of topic. To what extent did the story try to extract an underlying idea or trend? To what extent was it focused on just the incident itself? Was it that there was crash at North and Main Streets? Or did the story note that this was the fifth crash in a month at that corner? Or did the story go so far as to explain why the problem corner had not been fixed with a traffic light?²

Here, the reactive and somewhat superficial nature of so many stories becomes apparent. In all, 41 percent of stories focused on everyday incidents, such as relatively common car accidents or crimes. Just 15 percent dealt with ideas by finding the trend or larger problem suggested by whatever the incident was. Eleven percent concerned unusual events, things that were not typical or happened every day. Only 8 percent focused on the health of local institutions.

Story Focus of Local TV News Stories

Story Focus	Percent of Stories
Everyday incidents/crimes	41%
Human interest/pop culture/scandal	15
Ideas, issues, or trends	15
Unusual/monumental events	11
Local institutions	8
Political strategy	6
Breaking events	2
Public malfeasance	1
Other	1

Source: PEJ Local TV News Project
Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Actors in the News

Who do we see, and not see, on local television news?

Here again, the orientation toward live local and late-breaking news, especially of crime, has an impact. Suspects, lawyers, police officers and victims of crime made up 26 percent of all the people seen in the local news study over five years. Firefighters and emergency medical personnel add 3 percent more.

Who was not seen on local news also stands out. Seniors, for instance, were an asterisk, not even 1 percent. The poor and immigrants also did not even register a single percentage point as on-camera subjects in stories.

Government officials of all sorts, from the president to city council members, made up 14 percent, the second-largest group - after people involved in crime.

Main Subjects of Local TV News Stories

Main Subject	Percent of Stories
People involved in crime (e.g., victims, criminals, law enforcement, judges)	26%
Elected officials (e.g., Congress, mayors, school boards)	14
Business/corporations	8
Natural events (floods, severe weather, etc.)	5
Celebrities and athletes	5
Participant in unique events	5
Person in the street	4
Other	33

Source: PEJ Local TV News Project
Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.