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Rapid Review

THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
1 (2001): 165-170
© 2001 National Communication Association

Bloody Television

Bartholomew H. Sparrow

Matthew R. Kerbel. If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy of Television News.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. xii + 149.  $25.00.

Matthew Kerbel, one-time radio reporter, former television newswriter, and professor of political science, conducts a simple and informative exercise in If It Bleeds, It Leads.  He documents (and comments on) two-and-one-half hours of television talk shows, local news, and network evening news, running sequentially from 4 to 6:30 pm.  Using the actual transcripts from tapes of talk shows, local news shows from different regions of the country and different market size (Phoenix, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia), and the three network evening news shows, Kerbel is able to show the common threads that unite these three types of television programming.

One might think that there are bright lines separating the content and appeal of the three kinds of shows.  And from Kerbel’s initial descriptions of the TV talk shows, one could be forgiven for thinking precisely that.  Here, for instance, is how he characterizes the Sally Jesse Raphael show: 

On Tuesday, Sylvia is cheating on her husband Kenny by sleeping with Danny and Reggie, while Jeremy is cheating on his girlfriend Amy with Amy’s cousin Shawna and Dawn Marie is cheating on her boyfriend David with Eric—and Tammi. Sam may have been cheating on his twenty-two year old wife Erica, if the lie-detector test he took is correct. Will Erica resort to the same tactics as Caroline, who hired an undercover cop to kill her husband?

Tuesday’s show is followed by more of the same on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, only with gays, transsexuals, and additional heterosexual examples of “Outrageous Secret Lovers.”  (6)  

Kerbel wonders—as might the reader—whether

. . . the hazards, dangers, troubles, problems, and trials of daily life in our community or our country look as ugly as, say, Jerry’s audience?

That’s the brilliance of the talkers’ contribution.  They hand us over to the newsies all ready to feel good about ourselves.  And that poses a monumental challenge to the newsies, who have to stretch pretty far to find anything that will match, “My Boyfriend Is a Woman!”

But, the newsies are clever and they know what’s being asked of them.  Take a look at how well they rise to the occasion.  (11)

What the newsies do—that is, the reporters and anchors of the local and network news—turns out not to be so different from what the talk shows do (with the exception of Oprah Winfrey): they scare and then reassure (by exaggerating unrest at a local high school, in Kerbel’s example, and then reminding the viewer that school will go on as scheduled); they titillate (here, in stories about breast implants and “extreme sex”); they offer mayhem (a sports story on how the Detroit Red Wing and Phoenix Coyote hockey teams hate each other and express it through physical violence); and they tease the viewer throughout by mentioning news to come about the weather, breast implants, and other stories, and by promoting shows that are coming up later that evening or later in the week.

Beyond what the talk shows offer, the local news also provides the viewer the serious content of the weather, and serve up “dessert” stories at the end of the newscast (about new-born zoo animals, a celebrity’s birthday, or other cutesy topics) to end things on a feel-good note.  This last message is implicit in the talk shows, of course, as Kerbel observes: viewers feel good about themselves because their own lives are almost certainly not as bizarre as the behaviors described and witnessed on the preceding TV talk shows.

Nor are the network newscasts so different from the local news and talk shows.  News anchors and news reporters turn legislation, campaigning, and other political phenomena into war: the one area of legitimate news coverage that happens to resemble the drama and sometimes even the violence of the preceding local news and talk shows.  But since most of politics and government does not lend itself to the histrionics available to talk show producers and local TV news directors, absent an actual war, the news people apply the war metaphor to non-war subjects.  Kerbel’s transcript of Dan Rather’s comments on pending legislation is exemplary:  “A rapid-fire switch on Capitol Hill today in legislation to reduce youth violence.  The make-or-break House debate on even limited measures to keep guns out of schools suddenly turned into a vote to put copies of the Ten Commandments in the schools . . .” (81, emphasis added).  The same goes for ABC News’s coverage of Jack Kemp’s unwillingness to attack Sen. Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential primary: the networks treat the politicians as dire opponents, and if there aren’t sparks flying between them, then the news reporters and anchors investigate why not.

Kerbel also observes that the network newsies focus on themselves, that is, on what other reporters are reporting (here, ABC News’s reportage on George W. Bush campaigning in New Hampshire and the media crowds that he attracts); on celebrities (NBC News reporting on the release of Bob Woodward’s new book); and on fear (an NBC news story on car theft, a CBS News report on the radiation dangers of cell phones, and CBS News’s promotions of upcoming stories about the dangers and horrors of modern-day America, among other stories).  By not ending on a feel-good story—except on weekends—the network news proves its seriousness.

Given the similarities manifest in the production of talk shows, the local TV news, and the network news, Kerbel derives several tongue-in-cheek “rules” that guide television news programming.  Among them are the “Fundamental Rule” that television is a pretend medium; the “Weather corollary” that successful weather reports contain as much extraneous information as possible; the “Fundamental Rule Postulate 26,” that when constructing a newscast, newsies try to use the term “breast implants” as frequently as possible; and the “Fundamental Rule on Wheels” that news producers provide the sort of image “anyone would slow down to watch on the highway.”  There are other rules. The news director is symbolic keeper of the Fundamental Rule, though, and the news anchor—the talent—is the front person for the Fundamental Rule.

Indeed, not only are the apparent production values similar across these three kinds of programming, but Kerbel points out that the credentials of the talk show hosts (such as Jerry Springer, Montel Williams, and Jenny Jones) are almost identical to those of the network news anchors.  Even their roles are equivalent: trusted, kind-hearted, and responsible persons able to reassure the viewer, year in and year out.  A constant in the audience’s lives, just like an old friend or close neighbor.

If It Bleeds, It Leads is an interesting and amusing book, one that should appeal to the readers of this on-line journal who, I suspect, are either already sufficiently disaffected from television news that they don’t watch much of it (and probably hardly ever watch the afternoon talk shows), or, if they are students of television and the news media, already have a sense for what the author describes. Certainly Kerbel’s work is consistent with my own experience watching television news and, I suspect, that of the reader.  Having said that, the book is a little disappointing.

Despite the promise of the book’s subtitle (“An Anatomy of Television News”), the status of Matthew Kerbel as a professor of political science, and the reputation of the publisher, If It Bleeds, It Leads does not offer the reader a definitive study of talk-show and news programming, contrary to what one might expect. The volume is better suited to a general audience than an academic readership.  Kerbel acknowledges that he offers the reader a composite product (since he combines segments from different television news programs and moves some content from a later 11:00 pm slot to the earlier evening news slot), and the selection of what he calls “archetypical” news programming works for the purpose of entertaining the reader and briefly comparing the three kinds of programming.  But a content analysis, for instance, might have led to findings on the shared use of particular dramatic or narrative techniques across the three kinds of programs, or findings on the similarity in advertisements or promotions.  Or, a larger sample of local news from cities across the United States might have resulted in a more robust determination of the characteristics of local newscasts.  And what of CNN?  I suspect that it is not very different from the network news, but it may well be in some important areas.  But we don’t know.

Neither does If It Bleeds, It Leads inquire as to the reasons why this bloodletting is so prevalent. The book presents no theories of organizational behavior, no model of professionalism, and no other (economic?) explanation for the production values reflected in the author’s “rules.”  Nor does the author stop to ask whether this content is what the audience actually wants.  Clearly, some in the audience prefer Oprah Winfrey, and we know that overall television viewership is declining, whereas the Internet is continuing to attract users and cable viewership is gaining at the expense of the mainstream network broadcasts.  But Kerbel’s mocking commentary suggests an indirect answer: that he thinks his audience of undergraduates, students of communication, and general readers (presumably) either actively or intuitively rejects the content offered on these shows.  He counts on the audience to identify with his complaints about the talk shows, the local newscasts, and the evening network news, and to also want to hold them in contempt—just as he does.

In fact, Kerbel’s sarcastic commentary itself detracts from the educational value of the anatomy lesson.  Beneath the chapter entitled “Hour Two: Live at Five,” for instance, Kerbel has the parenthetical subtitle “Dead by Six” (12).  Or, in a discussion of a local newscaster’s interview with David Letterman, Kerbel writes “We see Dave on the ‘CBS Evening News’ set, waving to the camera as Dan Rather delivers the news. It’s a nice way of remind us of Dave’s news value. It doesn’t take long for Larry to find the Local Angle in his Special Report” (74).  And later in the book he advises the reader: “We’re entering the ‘Fear and Outrage’ portion of the newscast. I thought you should be warned.  The purpose of the ‘Fear and Outrage’ portion is the same as the purpose of everything that’s come before it: to make sure that you stay tuned for the weather segment that lies ahead at 6:26 PM” (105).  These outrage stories “leave us frustrated with government and industry.  It’s why we’re fortunate to have Dan and Peter and Tom. Without them, we wouldn’t have anyone to trust” (119). 

While the reader may well benefit from the entertainment value of the author’s sarcasm, she or he would have been even better off, it seems, had Kerbel—who knows, has written about, and has worked in television news—taken the time to explain why it is that smart, experienced, well-educated, attractive, and empathetic people get caught up in this business in the first place. We don’t know why Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, local news personalities, and the others we all know and like so much take on the roles that they do.  Is it a matter of salary and celebrity for the top television personalities, and the aspirations for such status from everyone else?  Social research, whether by interviews, surveys, the use of network analysis, or application of other methods might have been able shed light on why these workers in the gardens of television behave as they do. Sustained research might also have been able to indicate the attrition rate in what must be a difficult industry and to determine what happens to the news business drop-outs.

In the end, Kerbel presents a damning, sad, and even embittered picture of television.  If television does help us make sense of the world, figure out what’s important, show us things we might otherwise not know, and meet people with whom we would not otherwise be acquainted, as the author observes (xi), then one might expect the author to have followed up on this introductory observation to ask what members of the viewing public who care about politics can do about the formulaic and empty presentation of local and national news.  Were things different in the past?  Are there more benign alternatives for the future?  Again, we don’t know.

So while the reader is entertained and left more informed after reading Matthew Kerbel’s account, he or she is also left in despair.  Not only are there no hard findings (as opposed to illustrative or representative findings) in the volume, but there are no proposed solutions either.  Given the author’s own qualifications and the fact that this is very short book, a more definitive, more searching, and more policy-relevant study would have been possible.  Nor would the pieces to such a larger project been inconsistent or incommensurate with the material presented in the current volume.