Utah news media center on violence, according to USU study
A content study of the stories that lead local 10 o’clock newscasts and statewide newspapers has turned up surprising results.
Eight Utah State University students in James Shelledy’s graduate-level media and politics seminar audited the type of news that was the lead content in Salt Lake City’s four television networks, The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News during September.
The content was categorized into 11 different categories, with the majority of lead stories falling under the violence and tragedy group. Thirty-three percent of all lead stories from the six news outlets fell into the violence category.
Project Coordinator Leon D’Souza said the results of the study surprised him.
“This is Utah, so you’d think religion would be a big one,” D’Souza said.
He said violence and crime are expected to be found frequently because they are stories that are easy to find and they sell to users of media.
“The media are looking at other things to lead the news with. Religion didn’t lead at all and that is surprising,” D’Souza said.
Social and legal stories were the second most frequently found in the content analysis, but D’Souza said that could be attributed in part to the Parker Jensen cancer case dominating news in September.
D’Souza said that while violence stories were the single topic found most often leading in the Utah media, 67 percent of lead stories were something other than violence.
“There’s the old cliché ‘if it bleeds it leads,'” he said. “That may not always be true – that’s what we’ve pointed out, stories didn’t always have to bleed to lead.”
D’Souza said he thinks the media is doing a good job of finding a variety of important stories to report on.
Group member Dan Metcalf, a graduate student in political science, said he found some oddities in his analysis of KUTV Channel 2’s leading news content.
“My biggest surprise was that Channel 2 lead with a story about asphalt on I-215 on the anniversary of Sept. 11,” Metcalf said.
Metcalf, who is a stand-by employee for KUTV, said his experience working for the station helped him understand why news outlets lead with the material they do sometimes.
“They’re going to put on what keeps the viewers interested,” he said. “The biggest percentage of advertising revenue comes from the 10 o’clock news.”
Metcalf said he didn’t think the analysis was an indictment of the news outlets in any way.
“I think it really has more to say about the viewers of the station,” he said.
D’Souza said the project was a good experience for the group.
“This presented itself as a study that would provide interesting information while being fairly simple to handle as far as logistics were concerned,” he said.
Other members of the class participating in the study were Julie Ann Grosshans, Debra Jensen, Hilary Judd, Tracy Kell, Hans Peterson and Will Wheelright.
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