Media Insensitivity To Victims Of Violence - the media is concentrating more on crime coverage, often wounding the victims again with their insensitive coverage

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1999 by Sue Carter

First, there is general awareness in the newsroom by managers and reporters of public distaste for graphic and insensitive coverage, but there are no firm standards in place to guide coverage. Codes, standards, and rules that do operate tend to be applied ad hoc, or instituted after a story has gone awry, rather than before.

Beyond that, the temptation of the technology is substantial. Because the capability of "going live" is readily available, it is used frequently, and live shots often lead the newscasts, even if the crime reporting and victim coverage is well after the fact.

Crime and victim coverage tends to be driven by economics. Because crime is inexpensive to cover, there are more stories about crime and its victims than there are about the economy, politics, or education. The latter stories often require a greater investment of time on the part of the reporter, videographer, and producer.

In a medium governed by images of victims of crime and crime itself, coverage leans toward the shocking and can be visually grabbing. The industry practice is to "shoot tight" and capture everything on video. Then, in a display of circular logic, the prevailing view by local TV newsrooms is to use the graphic videotape "because it's there."

Competition among stations for viewers--who translate into rating points--affects the way in which victims are covered. Television stations as a group dislike being beaten by competitors to a story, and that includes all aspects of story coverage. At one station, a witness' particularly gruesome description of a victim's mutilation was aired "because the other station had it." The implication was that the other station would use it, so, not to be outdone, a reporter at the second station admitted, she had included the sound bite in her report.

Efforts to make changes

In addition to guidelines set by the National Victim Center, there are other codes and standards that need to remain on local television reporters' radar scope. The Radio-Television News Directors Association has a Code of Ethics that calls upon broadcasters to reject sensationalism and to respect "the dignity, privacy, and well-being of people with whom they deal." Similar language from the Society of Professional Journalists admonishes the media "not to pander to morbid curiosity about details of vice and crime."

Occasionally, individual newsrooms will have their own guidelines on crime and victim coverage. At KEZI-TV in Eugene, Ore., it violates station policy to air tape of body bags or corpses, shove cameras into the faces of grieving survivors, or cover trials unless invited. KVUE-TV in Austin, Tex., has attempted to include some reflection in its coverage of crime and victims by establishing such threshold questions as: "Is there an immediate threat to public safety?" and "Is there a threat to children?"

These proscriptions regarding crime coverage at KVUE, though, hardly mirror what Americans are seeing in their local, TV newscasts. Four-fifths of viewers have' concern about reporters' lack of sensitivity. This audience represents a truly silent majority.