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Local TV news is the most popular source for information among Americans. As a first
choice for news, it attracts a bigger audience than national or cable news: 59 percent, compared
to 38 percent for cable and 34 percent for national news (Pew Center 2004). An understanding
of local news is important, because so many people depend on it and find it more credible and
less biased than national TV news (Graber 2001). In spite of the public endorsement, expert
observers regard local news as a vast wasteland (Grossman 1997) where “if it bleeds, it leads”
(Kerbel 2000).
Even a cursory glance at local TV news reveals sensationalized stories that focus on
crime, murder, car chases, and mayhem, particularly in lead stories. The conventional wisdom in
the industry is that in order to compete in the competitive marketplace for TV news, stations
have to produce newscasts that contain short stories with dramatic visuals in order to grab and
hold the attention of viewers (McManus 1994). Nevertheless, local TV news has shared the
declining viewership that plagues television in general.
Political scientists have decried the increasingly poor quality of TV news as a disservice
to the public and a crisis for political deliberation (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995). Scholars are
especially critical of the kind of journalism that fails to inform citizens of the important policy
Convention