A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about the way TV news covers crime and suggested there must be a better way. Thanks to the National Press Foundation, the Radio Television Digital News Association and Arnold Ventures, I believe a new path is being forged.
On Jan. 12-14, 100 news directors and news leaders from across the U.S. gathered in San Diego for a deep dive into how crime is covered, the sources we lean on for information and data, the stereotypes we inadvertently reinforce in the process and the toll all of this “if it bleeds, it leads” takes on the victims, the accused and the journalists trying to make sense of it all. A single three-day summit does not lasting change make, but it planted a stake in the ground, and I hope it will encourage station groups and individual newsrooms to assess and change a pattern that is decades in the making.
For far too long, newsrooms have relied heavily, if not solely, on local police and district attorneys as their primary source when covering crime. And because local television news is a leading source of news for most Americans, it is imperative that local news journalists fully understand the criminal justice system and know where to go to parse the data, explain the circumstances and tell their stories objectively and factually. Local newsrooms are literally defining their communities by what they choose to