Body-bag journalism.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Local TV news - Pundit Watch - Column

Here's a story that just could save your life," warns the baritone voice on the TV. "Experts will show you how you can protect yourself from being abducted. Details at 11:00." The next night, another story that could save your life: how to stand in an elevator so that if anyone attacks you, you can protect yourself.

The following night, a story designed to make us obsessive hand-washers a la Howard Hughes: a lurid account of all the lethal germs waiting to pounce on us from public doorknobs and escalator handrails, with tips on how to fend off these invisible predators. This is the new journalistic standard: If a story can't prevent your departure to the great beyond, it's not worth putting on the air.

Of course, these handy how-to stories don't come on right away -- first you have to get through the murders, fires, automobile accidents, and robberies. Then there's the investigative reporting: an expose on manicure shops that make all their clients soak their nails in the same water and, for Valentine's Day, a probe into which florist has the best roses. Then comes cotton candy: coverage of Elvis look-alikes or a beauty contest for cows.

Welcome to the local news. The "market" I live closest to, Detroit, is typical. The motto, "If it bleeds, it leads," is in full force here, with as much as 54 percent of nightly news stories devoted to crime and disasters. Rocky Mountain Media Watch, in a 1995 study of 100 local newscasters around the country, found that 42 percent of their coverage reveled in mayhem. If there are no good disasters in the vicinity, the local news uses the wonders of satellite technology to import them: One night, a Detroit station led with footage of a bus that had crashed into the Charles River in Boston.

A study of the 11:00 news done by the Detroit News (just for the record, a scab newspaper), found that only 2 percent of the local news focused on the government and politics -- that translates into eighteen seconds! There was zero coverage of poverty, education, race relations, environmental problems, science, or international affairs during the two months of the study.

Watching the local news in Detroit, you would never know there was a state legislature, a state court system, or a governor. But when the auto show was on in December, the local news was basically a series of free ads for the car companies.

Just when citizens need increased journalistic oversight of state government, they are getting almost none at all...