Media Musings: Is TV news losing credibility?
TV news directors, like editors everywhere, pretend they know what news is and how to deliver it. The dirty little secret about that is they’re often only guessing and acting out of instinct, education and experience.
That’s also why local stations seem to report the same news with only minor variation on what stories lead the newscast and what can be held for the second half. But there are always surprises out there when professional pollsters begin probing the viewership in a systematic and professional way.
So, the latest studies are in about local TV news, this time conducted by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. It asked both viewers and news directors a series of questions that must have reinforced some attitudes toward the audience, but there were surprises.
There are three that hammer conventional wisdom.
Let’s start with the “liberal media” label arch conservatives try and sell every day about TV news. Only 27 percent of the public said bias is a “major problem” while 14 per cent said local media are biased in favor of the “conservative” point of view and that leaning was a major problem. The public – more than the news directors – said news content was improperly influenced by profit motives, the race to get the story first (love that word “exclusive”), and to increase ratings.
More than 70 percent of the public said it believes “news reporting on local television is improperly influenced by advertisers.”
Then there’s the belief that viewers are constantly channel surfing during local newscasts. Sixty percent of the news directors said they believed viewers switched at least twice during a local newscast. Almost half of the public said they didn’t change channels even once in a newscast.
Not surprisingly, the younger the viewer, the more channel changing was reported during the news and non-white viewers changed more often that white viewers. That’s why our local stations are now telling us what is coming up in the next five minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes, reflecting the fear you are leaving for another station.
The one that should be of the most trouble to news directors it that local TV news does seem to have a credibility problem. Sixty percent of the surveyed public said they’ve become more skeptical about the accuracy of the news. It’s important to note, however, this survey was taken before the war.
Now, why does this matter? Because the No. 1 source for news is television. It doesn’t matter that TV news on the local level is superficial — and often very vulnerable to being incorrect by omission.
It’s fair to observe that the public is very wise to how twisted local TV news becomes because of all of the pressures placed upon it, the most notable being ratings and outside forces such as advertisers.
The local TV stations in Nashville are part of large corporate structures which set profit goals and they are based on ratings, in part.
But in all of this discussion and study, the word quality doesn’t appear, especially on the balance sheets. Quality means lots of series work, detailed interviews that last more than a sound bite, and walking away from the car wrecks, nightly shooting report, and every fire, great or small.
It’s been done in the past by Nashville stations, to the point the market was viewed as one of the best in the nation for local TV news. That cannot be sustained today.
Only a cock-eyed optimist would believe it can be restored. Local news is the cash cow for local TV stations and as long as ratings are allowed to be the deciding factor as to what is serious, local TV news will continue to serve the democracy unevenly.
The credibility finding should be a wake-up call for all local TV stations across the nation. The public is not fooled. The yellow caution light is blinking about credibility and it should not be dismissed out of hand. To do so is a mistake.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)