THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOCAL TV NEWS
A study of news coverage in two markets
By Don Heider

Watch the local news in Milwaukee and Mobile and you'll see similar stories done in similar ways. The same thing would hold true in almost any local market. But shouldn't local newscasts be more different than they are alike? Why else do we watch local news, if not to get a sense of what's happening in our own community? So why is it so often missing?

To find out, I studied the news process in two local newsrooms in Albuquerque, NM, and Honolulu, HI, both very diverse areas. What I found was that geography appears to have an impact on news coverage decisions.

The Albuquerque station considers almost the entire state within its coverage area, but that doesn't mean it covers the entire state. "We concentrate in a four county area," said an assignment editor. "It's conceivable it's at the expense of Grants, Socorro, Santa Rosa to the east about 100 miles from here, and many, many, many other towns." It may seem obvious that stations are deciding what to cover based on where stories happen and how important that location is to the viewing audience. They're also considering the time and money it costs to get there and back. What's less obvious is the effect this "geo-journalism" has on news coverage.

In New Mexico, most of the Native American population does not live in the four counties covered most often by the Albuquerque station. Pueblos and other Native American lands are scattered across the state, in some cases far removed from the metropolitan areas. If the station never goes there, the stories and perspectives of Native Americans are rarely on the news.

Hawaii offers a different set of challenges. The Honolulu station's coverage area includes its own island of Oahu, as well as five others. Covering events on neighboring islands means crossing the ocean, since the station has no bureaus outside Oahu. Honolulu still has by far the largest population base, including the center for the state government. But a news manager at the Honolulu station acknowledged that coverage of the neighbor islands was insufficient. "We're not covering them as well as we should," he said. "In order to get people over there and get our pictures back is very expensive."

The majority of Native Hawaiians, like the majority of people in Hawai'i, live on Oahu, in Honolulu County, which covers the entire island. But in Honolulu County, Native Hawaiians only make up a little over ten percent of the population, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Native Hawaiians make up a larger percentage of the population in each of the surrounding counties, ranging from fifteen percent to forty percent. Thus, on these neighboring islands, where there remains more influence and a larger percentage of native peoples, there is less coverage. Many of the people active in the Sovereignty movement live on the neighboring islands. But crews do not get to most of these islands daily, let alone even weekly, to report news.

Even on Oahu itself, however, coverage is limited by a different kind of geo-journalism. One reporter who lives in Wainae, about a 45-minute drive from downtown Honolulu, says it gets little coverage except for reports on crime. The area is primarily populated by people of color, especially native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, and is widely believed to be poor and dangerous. Wainae is geographically close, but the station treats it as remote because of the negative perceptions of the community.

Attitudes affect coverage in New Mexico as well. Reporters in Albuquerque were reluctant to visit or learn about activities taking place in Native American Pueblos. Some of those Pueblos are located within a 30 to 40 minute drive from the city. In other words, they were physically close to the station, but when it came to coverage, they seemed remote. It is a culturally-constructed remoteness, not one determined by actual distance.

If stations don't cover large segments of their audience because they're hard to reach geographically or culturally, the newscasts they air won't reflect the community they're supposed to serve. In this era of new media competition and shrinking audiences, it seems crucial for stations to find ways of overcoming those barriers. Producing truly local news that includes more diverse views could be critical to their survival.

References:

1. Don Heider, a former local television news reporter, producer, photographer and manager, teaches journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

2. Read more about this study in the book White News: Why Local News Programs Don't Cover People of Color, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, March 2000.

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