Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public

Local television news is the public's primary source of public affairs information. News stories about crime dominate local news programming because they meet the demand for 'action news." The prevalence of this type of reporting has led to a crime narrative or "script" that includes two core elements: crime is violent and perpetrators of crime are non-white males. We show that this script has become an ingrained heuristic for understanding crime and race. Using a multi-method design, we assess the impact of the crime script on the viewing public. Our central finding is that exposure to the racial element of the crime script increases support for punitive approaches to crime and heightens negative attitudes about African-Americans among white, but not black, viewers. In closing, we consider the implications of our results for intergroup relations, electoral politics, and the practice of journalism. ocal television news is America's principal window on the world. Surveys of television viewing (e.g., Roper-Starch 1994), hours of daily programming (Papper and Gerhard 1999) and the actual share of the viewing audience captured by local newscasts (Hess 1991), all demonstrate the dominance of local news. In fact, people can watch live local news almost anytime-mornings, afternoons, evenings, prime time, and late night. As the amount of news time has increased, so too has competition between stations. The drive for audience ratings pushes local news organizations to favor an "action news" format. Stories about crime provide several necessary ingredients for the successful marketing of news-concrete events with powerful impact on ordinary people, drama and emotion, and, above all, attention-getting visuals. The special attraction of television to crime is reflected in the content of local television news. In a recent study of fifty-six different cities, crime was the most prominently featured subject in the local news (Klite, Bardwell, and Salzman 1997). In some cities, crime accounted for more than 75 percent of all news coverage. We argue that local news coverage of crime follows a standard script that features two distinct elements. First, crime is violent. Armed bank robberies, homicides, "home invasions," car)ackings, and gang-related activities are now staples of local news. The second element of the crime script is the presence of a particular suspect. Episodic reporting requires a regular "cast" of characters the most prominent of which is the suspect. Given the visual nature of the medium, the importance of the suspect to the script means that crime news is often accompanied by racial imagery (Campbell,