TV newscasts no more violent than real life

May 8, 1997

A new national study reports that South Florida's TV stations spend 27.5 percent of their evening news broadcasts on crime and criminal justice, prompting the obvious question:

Is that all?

The surprise isn't how much time Miami TV devotes to murder and mayhem, but how little. The average for local 6 P.M. news broadcasts was 29.3 percent—about 30 seconds more than in the blood-spattered Dade-Broward market.

If anything, our stations show uncommon restraint. South Florida being the violent pit it is, TV news directors could easily fill the entire program with local gore. They seldom do.

Yet the University of Miami professor who directed the media study laments the findings. "It's unfortunate," said Joe Angotti, "that body-bag journalism is what local news chooses to focus on at the expense of more important stories."

Hogwash. What is unfortunate is that there's so much violence that it can't be ignored. Sadly, body-bag journalism reflects a body-bag world. We all worry some about crime because it's touched all of us.

Is it not "important" news when a two-bit shoplifter guns down a security guard in broad daylight at one of South Florida's busiest shopping malls?

How about when four members of a family, including two little children, are slaughtered in their Miramar home? Or when a father, his son and a friend are executed by intruders at an electronics warehouse in West Dade?

All that from just a week's worth of police-blotter entries. You see the problem: No other single place can compete with our volume, ferocity and weirdness of crime.

Considering the deluge, Miami's TV stations do a decent job of balancing police news with health, education and politics. Some days, it isn't easy.

Give viewers a choice between an informative story about a new low-cholesterol diet or a grisly tale about sickos stealing human heads out of crypts, and they'll dial up the cadavers every time.

For the crime-content survey, researchers in eight markets studied a half-hour of news broadcasts on four random days. Wow, that's two whole hours of TV in each city—and who's calling whom shallow?

(Incredibly, the most infamous of our local stations, WSVN-Channel 7, finished third in the body-bag derby. No talk yet of a slander suit.)

One hole in the methodology: Only English-speaking TV stations were studied. Another flaw: Only 6 P.M. broadcasts were analyzed. Many stations start the news at 5 P.M., and in-depth features often air that first hour.

That's not to say some crime stories aren't overplayed and exploited on TV, sometimes disgracefully. It's also true that some are underplayed.

In any case, there aren't many news directors who wouldn't love to get more time for school issues, medical breakthroughs, political analysis and I-Team investigations.

The problem is, news keeps happening. You can't keep it off the air.

To insinuate that crime coverage isn't serious journalism is to repudiate one of the media's essential roles. People want to be safe in their communities, and they deserve to know when they're not.

One reason that serious crime fell so sharply in New York is that the media kept a spotlight on it. As for the use of "sensational video" decried by Professor Angotti, Anthony Windes probably isn't complaining.

He's the Sears guard whose shooting was captured by a store camera. The chilling replay, widely broadcast, is what enabled police to identify the shoplifter who allegedly pulled the trigger.

How much more important can TV news be?

A war looms on gun sales

June 18, 1998

If the National Rifle Association gets its way, Florida will hang on to its dubious reputation as America's biggest flea market for illegal firearms.

The NRA has promised to "do whatever it takes" to kill a proposed constitutional amendment that would seal a gaping hole in the state's gun laws, and make it harder for itinerant traffickers to restock their arsenals here.

As it stands, unscrupulous dealers working the Florida circuit can sell practically any type of weapon to anybody, as long as the transaction occurs at a gun show or flea market. Sales by firearms "collectors" at such events currently are exempt from the cooling-off period and background check that apply at retail gun shops.

The result is that outlaw dealers slither from one gun show to the next, falsely claiming to be collectors or one-time sellers. In this way thousands of high-powered weapons are peddled to buyers who haul them out of the state.

It's as easy as buying a Slurpee, and requires the same paperwork: none.

Florida is the prime source of illegal handguns and street weapons confiscated by police in New York and other seaboard cities. Next to orange juice and cocaine, guns are our most lucrative interstate freight.

Law enforcement officials, backed by Gov. Lawton Chiles, lobbied to get the flea-market loophole closed by the Legislature—a lost cause. Most lawmakers are either scared of the NRA, or politically beholden to it.

So prosecutors and police turned instead to the Constitution Revision Commission, which was writing a slate of amendments for next November's ballot. The commission crafted a firearms measure that has provoked a frantic war cry from NRA leaders.

The last time Florida voters were given a voice on a gun control law, it passed by a landslide.That was the 1990 amendment requiring a three-day wait and criminal records check for handgun purchases.

The NRA whined and wailed. It said the law was unnecessary because criminals don't buy guns at gun stores.

Turns out the NRA was wrong again. Since the amendment was adopted, background checks have prevented thousands of convicted felons from purchasing handguns at retail outlets.

But, until now, the law couldn't stop those same felons from buying a suitcase full of Clocks from a friendly "collector" at the weekend gun show.

The new amendment gives counties the power to close that insane loophole by requiring records checks on all gun sales on property "to which the public has the right of access"—a provision strongly supported by law enforcement in Miami-Dade and other urban areas.

The NRA opposes it virulently, saying communities have no right to make or enforce their own firearms laws. The courts say otherwise, and early polls show widespread support for the new ballot measure.

As fall approaches, the gun lobby will launch a media blitz to scare voters away from the gun-show amendment. Don't be surprised if the NRA models its campaign after the one Big Sugar ran to defeat the Everglades cleanup amendment in 1996.

The cane growers spent millions proclaiming that the penny-a-pound proposal was a new tax on consumers—a complete lie, but it worked. Look for the NRA to try the same thing.

We'll hear how the gun amendment is a diabolical step toward mandatory gun licensing, or even government confiscation! Maybe if we're really lucky, they'll trot out Charlton Heston for some doomsday-style TV spots.

It should be quite an act, and if it somehow succeeds Florida will remain the prime shopping mecca for the country's underground gun traffickers.