Local TV News in Canada

TELEVISION NEWS CONTINUES to be the most popular source of news in Canada, with millions of Canadians tuning in to their local TV news broadcasts each night. [The Gallup Poll, "Canadians Tune in to Television for Their News," February 13, 1997.] The National Media Archive has recently started to investigate local TV news in Canada. On Balance volume 10, number 8, compared the lead stories on local TV newscasts in Canada and the US, and found that the American newscasts were more sensational.

To further investigate Canadian news values, the contents of the July 25, August 28, and September 24, 1997 local TV news programs from 29 cities across Canada have been divided into three broad news categories: "civil," "chaos," and "entertainment."

Civil news, which is news about government acts, the economy, foreign affairs, science, technology, social trends, and other issues, contributes to the viewer's knowledge of society. Chaos news, which is about crime, accidents, or natural disasters, portrays the world as chaotic or dangerous. Entertainment news, which includes celebrity news, movie reviews, the Royal family, festivals, and general human interest stories, etc., seeks primarily to amuse and titillate rather than inform.

As table 1 shows, there were significant differences between Canadian and American local TV news programming. On Canadian stations, civil news accounted for over 50 percent of news reports, compared to less than 40 percent in the US. [US figures are based on a study by Denver-based Rocky Mountain Media Watch, "Baaad News: Local TV News in America," 1997.]

Within Canada there were also significant differences between the networks. CTV-affiliated stations provided the most civil news (53.6%) while independent stations, or those otherwise affiliated, such as Global, provided the least (45.7%).

The media, and its ability to report "civil" news, is an integral part of a democracy. According to political scientist Martin Shaw, civil society comprises "the institutions which have the specific role of representing groups within society in broad cultural, political and ideological senses, both in the context of society itself and it relation to the state. . . . The central institutions of civil society are those which define the meaning and significance of events, representing social interests and articulating widely held viewpoints in relation to them." [Martin Shaw, "Civil Society and Media in Global Crisis: Representing Distant Violence," New York: Pinter, 1996, p. 13.]

In other words, civil society is about citizen participation, which has as its premise that citizens are informed about issues that affect them. Local TV news in Canada appears to take this responsibility more seriously than do US stations. In Canada, news about governance accounted for 25.5 percent of reports on local TV news programs, while in the US, political news constituted just 13.1 percent (see figure 1).

The biggest difference between Canadian and American local TV news programming was the amount of time dedicated to reporting chaos news, that is, crime, accidents, and natural disasters. Chaos news accounted for 40 percent of US TV news reports, compared to just 22 percent in Canada. The number of crime reports accounted for the difference in chaos news between Canada and the US.

Table 1: Proportion if Civil, Chaos, and Entertainment News in Canada and the US
	Canada	US	CBC Stations	CTV Stations	Other Stations
Civil News	50.7%	39.6%	52.4%	53.6%	45.7%
Chaos News	22.0%	40.1%	20.1%	22.2%	23.7%
Entertainment News	27.3%	20.3%	27.5%	24.2%	30.6%

In the US, Rocky Mountain Media Watch found that crime constituted almost 35 percent of the news items reported on local American TV news programs. In other words, one in three reports was about a criminal act, investigation, or trial. In contrast, crime accounted for less than 15 percent of local Canadian TV news, approximately one-half the U.S. rate.

According to media critic Bob Mullen, "American research has shown—through extensive content analysis—that violence occurs much more often on television than in the real external world." [Bob Mullen, "Consuming Television: Television and its Audiences," Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford, 1997.]

Television violence includes the violence reported on the news—and because news represents reality, violence on TV news may be even more shocking than violence in dramatic series. For many years, the television news industry has been accused of over-reporting news that shocks, such as murder, in their quest for ratings.

Does TV news focus excessively on crime, with nearly 35 percent of US reports and 15 percent of Canadian reports providing information on crime? It is certainly the case that violent crime is far less pervasive in Canada than in the US. In 1996, 633 homicides were committed in Canada, compared to approximately 19,000 in the U.S. This translates into a rate of 2.1 per 100,000 population in Canada, compared to 7.5 per 100,000 in America. [Juristat, Statistics Canada, cat. 85-002-XPE, vol. 17, no. 9.] Taking the murder rate as a general indicator of crime, it therefore follows that there should be even less crime reporting in Canada than currently exists.

Each TV news program decides on a daily basis how much crime to report. For example, three local TV stations in Calgary, CBRT (CBC), CFCN (CTV), and CICT (WIC), each reported on the events of the three days examined for this study. However, "chaos" news, that is, crime, accidents, and natural disasters, accounted for 13.3 percent of the CBC station's news reports, 23.7 percent of the CTV affiliate's newscasts and 33.3 percent of the WIC station's news.

Local television news is a balance between information and entertainment. This dual objective often results in a tension or conflict over what stories to report. For example, on August 28, 1997, the Alberta government announced it had a $575 million budget surplus. On the local Calgary CBC and CTV TV stations, this story was the lead news item. However, on the WIC station, the lead story was a 3-minute report on the Banff National Park warden who was warning tourists to stay away from the elk.

While US stations had approximately double the crime news, entertainment news was more prevalent on local Canadian TV news programs than on the US stations. Overall, entertainment news accounted for 27 percent of Canadian programming, while in the U.S. entertainment news was just 20 percent.

The media's appetite for entertaining stories is evident in the type of stories that received the greatest number of reports. On July 25, 1997, the number two and three most reported stories on local TV news in Canada were of the "entertainment" variety. The verdict that Autumn Jackson was guilty of attempting to extort money from comedian Bill Cosby, and the story that US actor Caroll O'Connor, of "All in the Family" fame, had won his slander trial, were reported on more local TV news stations than either the Health Ministers' meeting regarding a new blood authority to replace the Red Cross, the affect of the GM-Michigan strike on the Canadian economy, or claims of innocence by key Bre-X players.

Even more startling, the story of 26 Belgians stuck upside-down on a rollercoaster was reported on more local TV newscasts in Canada than Ontario Premier Mike Harris' allegations of gas price fixing. On the August 28, 1997 local TV newscasts, the only story to receive more reports across Canada than the 26 upside-down Belgians was the apprehension of two young offenders who had escaped from a boot-camp in Ontario.

The news Canadians receive about their American neighbours is also focused on either entertainment or chaos. Human interest stories and crime together accounted for over 60 percent of news about the US. Forty percent of US news broadcast in Canada is about American celebrities and other human interest stories. A further 20 percent of the news that Canadians get about the US focused on crime. International news exhibited a similar trend, with human interest, crime, and natural disasters dominating the international news stories Canadians see on the evening news.