Contact: Margot Winick
[email protected]
(305) 284-1607
November 9, 1998
NATIONAL SURVEY FINDS THREAT OF LAWSUITS HAS CHILLING EFFECT ON TV NEWS COVERAGE
CORAL GABLES, FL -- A majority of the nation's television news directors say the threat of being sued is producing a major chilling effect on daily news coverage, according to a national survey conducted by the University of Miami.
The survey, which polled 360 local television directors around the country,revealed that 61 percent of the news directors reported that the threat of being sued for libel or invasion of privacy was a daily concern in determining news coverage. Forty-five percent said they were more concerned about running up legal expenses that a lawsuit could potentially bring than they were about losing a case in court.
The study also revealed that one out of every five news directors say some news stories that should have been covered in the past year were not covered specifically due to concerns about legal liabilities and 28 percent reported omitting important information in a news story because of similar concerns.
"Lawsuits have always been an occupational hazard in television newsrooms," said one of the study's authors, Paul Driscoll, director of Broadcasting & Broadcast Journalism at the UM School of Communication. "Television news directors are under enormous pressure to air edgier stories that will hold onto viewers in an environment where suing or threatening to sue the press is increasingly commonplace."
The results of the UM survey, entitled Legal Concerns in TV Newsrooms: A National Survey of Local Television News Directors, were presented to the Radio-Television Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at its annual convention earlier this year.
In the survey, news directors answered questions about their experiences and concerns regarding a variety of legal issues including libel, invasion of privacy, trespass while news gathering, and station news policies. The research was conducted in March 1998 and results were compared with a similar survey conducted by the UM communications faculty Driscoll, Sigman L. Splichal and Leonardo C. Ferreira, in 1995.
Despite concerns about liability, the 1998 survey reveals an increased use of hidden cameras and hidden microphones for newsgathering by local TV stations. The use of such techniques may be a result of pushing the limits of newsgathering in search of higher ratings, according to the study's authors.
Eighty-nine percent of the respondents agreed with the statement "there is a big difference between what viewers say they want from local TV news and what they will actually watch." In fact, 61 percent think viewers are fed up with local TV's coverage of violent crime.
The survey also found that local television news directors keep their jobs for a median of only two years. "The job of television news director has reached true journeyman status, with nomadic news directors moving from market to market with disturbing regularity," said Driscoll. "It is hard to imagine how news directors, largely unfamiliar with the communities they cover, can regularly deliver a credible newscast."
The survey was conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Modern Media at the UM School of Communication. The center supports research aimed at understanding and predicting uses of modern media, and also serves as a teaching unit and service unit to the local community.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information about the survey, contact Professors Driscoll, Splichal and Ferreira at the UM School of Communication, (305) 284-2265
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