Petitions to Deny the Re-licensing of 4 stations

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Group Challenges FCC Licenses of Denver TV Stations
Television News Harming Citizens

Denver, February 16 (RMMW) - Rocky Mountain Media Watch filed Petitions to Deny the licenses of four Denver TV stations before the Federal Communications Commission today, claiming they are broadcasting local news programs harmful to citizens. RMMW asks the FCC, pursuant to its legal charge to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest," to protect the people.

The Petitions, based on a series of content analyses of local television news conducted by RMMW from 1994 to 1997, document that local newscasts on KWGN-TV, Channel 2, KCNC-TV, Channel 4, KMGH-TV, Channel 7, and KUSA-TV, Channel 9, are severely unbalanced, with excessive reporting of violent topics and trivial stories and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wider range of stories and vital social issues, including local elections, the arts, science, education, the environment, AIDS, children and others. In addition, newscasts present stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and minorities.

"We're fighting the onslaught of tabloid journalism," said Paul Klite, RMMW Executive Director. "Night after night audiences are terrified and titillated, aroused and manipulated, but not informed. Like an unbalanced diet, which gradually can lead to serious illness, the local TV news threatens the health of our community."

RMMW asks the FCC to require stations to improve their newscasts and to (1.) air public service announcements alerting the public to TV news' potentially harmful side-effects, (2.) broadcast educational media literacy programs in prime time for both children and adults, (3.) conduct mandatory training for news staffs regarding media violence effects, and (4.) require stations to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving their coverage of local elections.

"Distorted TV news has serious side-effects, like viewer alienation, cynicism, racial polarization, violent behavior including copy-cat crimes, intimidation, passivity, ignorance, and disempowerment," said Klite. "Together these constitute a toxic stew of negative influences in our community."

The complete Petitions are on RMMW's web site: www.imagepage.com/rmmw.

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Petition to Deny the Re-licensing of KWGN-TV

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In the Matter of
Re-licensing of
Denver, Colorado
Television station
KWGN-TV, )

Petition to deny

Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado not-for-profit corporation, files this Petition to Deny the re-licensing of Denver, Colorado television station KWGN-TV, Channel 2 on February 17, 1998.

KWGN-TV is broadcasting daily local news programs that are harming the citizens of Colorado. We ask the FCC, pursuant to its legal charge to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest," to protect us.

This Petition will document that local newscasts on KWGN-TV are severely unbalanced, with excessive coverage of violent topics and trivial events, and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wide range of stories and vital social issues. In addition, newscasts present stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and minorities. The amount of advertising is excessive. Like any unbalanced diet, TV news can have serious health effects.

We believe the FCC has a clear responsibility to act to protect citizens from this unhealthy diet of information. FCC action is not a question of censorship; no one wants the government to regulate news content or interfere with broadcasters' First Amendment guarantees. The issue is beyond bad journalism, although a crisis is currently occurring in journalistic ethics and values, and industry leaders, like Walter Cronkite, Robert McNeill, Ted Turner and Dan Rather, are speaking out against the forces of tabloid journalism. This is a public health issue we call "toxic television news."

The evidence for these assertions comes from a series of content analyses of local newscasts conducted between 1994 to 1997 by Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado non-profit activist organization. Listed as Attachments to this Petition, these studies include three one-week-long content analyses, three one-day national studies which include KWGN-TV and three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 elections.

Toxic Television News

The programming components of the Toxic TV News syndrome are:

a. Excessive and exploitive violence

It is not uncommon for half the news each night on KWGN-TV to be about violent topics. The table below summarizes the percent of the local news' air-time, that dealt with violent topics in our seven content analyses. This "Mayhem Index" is the percentage of the news devoted to stories about crime, disasters, war and terrorism. The 18 evening newscasts on KWGN-TV included in the seven surveys have an over-all average 45 percent mayhem. Additionally, we note that about half the air-time devoted to crime coverage is about murders. Other violent crimes are also popular news fare. This is not an accurate mirror of reality. Murder is one of the least frequent crimes committed.

	Mayhem Index
	(Percent of the News About Violent Topics)
	Station: KWGN-TV
Survey #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date	1/94	4/94	7/94	10/94	1/95	8/95	2/97
% Mayhem	-	56	63	22	33	26	49

b. Deficient and inadequate news coverage

With the news window dominated by violent topics, vital issues of concern to our community are almost invisible in the news on KWGN-TV. These include the environment, local elections, arts, science, education, poverty, AIDS, children and others (see attachments for average air-time devoted to these topics). By any measure of balanced reporting, television station KWGN-TV is failing the public interest.

Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in local election coverage. During the 1994 election cycle, we monitored Denver channel KWGN-TV, during the week of October 10-14 (5 total newscasts). Election news averaged less than one minute per show.

Two years later, we conducted three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 ballot. In Colorado, numerous ballot initiatives as well as a complete set of state legislative and local races were on the ballot. We monitored KWGN-TV on September 11, October 2 and October 23 (see Attachment #9), eight, five and two weeks, respectively, before election day. On the three one-hour long 9 p.m. newscasts, KWGN-TV broadcast only six election stories out of a total of approximately 65 news items. Five of these concerned the U.S. Presidential race. Twelve political ads in these same three shows were predominantly for U.S. President (5 ads) and U.S. Congress (5 ads).

Therefore, most of the meager political "information" on the local news was not about local election contests, and there were more political ads about local election contests than election-related news items.

c. Racial and gender stereotyping and polarization

Gender and racial diversity are additional areas where newscasts are out of balance. People of olor are often stereotyped as perpetrators of crime in newscasts, presenting a negative role model to viewers. Women and minorities are still under-represented on newscasts as authorities, experts and leaders. That is not in the public interest. The combined data for four Denver stations, including KWGN-TV, is summarized in the tables below. (National data is in the the attachments.

	Ethnic Appearances
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
Category	Race
	White		Black		Latino		All Others
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Anchor	14	88	1	6	0	0	1	6
Reporter	93	83	7	6	11	9	1	1
Sources	227	80	40	14	13	5	0	0
Perpetrator	20	32	34	54	9	14	0	0
Victim	78	83	7	8	6	7	1	1

	Males and Females in the News
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
	Male		Female
Category	#	%	#	%
Anchor	11	69	5	31
Reporter	66	62	46	38
Source	218	77	65	23
Perpetrator	61	94	5	6
Victim	41	46	48	54

d. Excess commercialism, triviality and manipulation

KWGN-TV devotes a higher portion of evening newscast air-time to commercial messages than TV stations in most U.S. cities. In our 1997 survey, ads comprised 31.3 percent of the show. Our surveys also quantify the amount of "fluff" in newscasts. Chit-chat, teases, soft news and celebrity stories on KWGN -TV occupied 48.6 percent as much air-time as news, ranking them 15th for fluff out of 100 stations. These trivial elements further reduce the time available for substantive information. Lastly, we note that KWGN-TV seems to be unique in the country for its sports coverage on the local news. They have two sports anchors who take up the last fifteen minutes of the show each night.

Discussion

Television content is capable of producing both acute harm, as demonstrated in the recent outbreak of television induced epilepsy in Japan, and chronic toxicity. In this country, the V-chip and ratings system for TV programming are a clear acknowledgment by our society of the chronic harmful effects of distorted television imagery, especially violence. (News programs are specifically excluded from ratings.) Decades of research and thousands of studies, going back to the conclusions of George Gerbner and the Surgeon General in the 1960s, document the danger to the public. Many health and educational organizations have spoken out on the cumulative impacts of media violence:

"Television violence is a risk factor threatening the health of young people." American Medical Association, 1992

"Watching of television violence by children causes greater aggressiveness. The impact of TV violence may surface years later." American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 1989

"Viewing televised violence may lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children." American Psychological Association, 1985

"The National Parent Teachers Associations demand ...reduction in the amount of violence shown on television." National PTA, 1989

Excess violence in TV news remains a formula on station KWGN-TV even as U.S. crime rates fall. The cliche about local TV news is "if it bleeds, it leads," and we emphasize that on the TV news the blood is real. Media violence negatively influences children's learning, aggression and empathy. Adults, too, are not immune and can become cynical, fearful or desensitized by relentlessly violent media messages. Seeing one more murder on TV news doesn't make most of us go out and commit murder. It's more like a another dose of one part-per-billion of alienation. Over time, however, the effects are cumulative. You know the average child has seen thousands of murders and hundreds of thousands of acts of violence on television by the time they reach puberty.

A slick and profitable formula has captured the local TV news at station KWGN-TV. Night after night, audiences are terrified and titillated, aroused and manipulated -- but not informed. Toxic TV news syndrome effects people of all ages, genders, races and geographical areas. Children are especially vulnerable, as are heavy TV users. Paraphrasing James Madison, "Without good information, democracy becomes a farce or a tragedy or both."

The offending agent is television news' distorted depiction of our culture, producing both exaggeration of many of our basest images and neglect of others. Like an unbalanced diet, which gradually leads to serious illness, our local TV news presents a world blown out of proportion. (We note the simple objective measurements presented here do not address other important issues of balance in the news, such as political bias and spin. Since the Fairness Doctrine and equal time provisions were voided ten years ago, the potential for abuse in these areas has, if anything, increased.)

While KWGN-TV is part of a national trend towards more and more sensational newscasts, some television stations are acknowledging and addressing the need for radical changes in local TV news. KVUE-TV, Austin TX, in response to focus groups indicating citizens are fed up with violent newscasts, has adopted guidelines for reducing the reporting of sensational crime stories. (see Attachment #7, page 4).

A host of significant symptoms have been attributed to distorted TV news, including viewer alienation, cynicism, violent behavior (including copy-cat crimes), intimidation, passivity, ignorance, racial polarization and disempowerment. Together these constitute a toxic stew of pervasive negative influences in our culture.

It is not in the public interest for KWGN-TV to harm the public or exploit or misinform them. Neither is it in the public interest to cultivate a mass audience that does not vote, mistrusts their neighbors, is afraid to go out at night and is disconnected from their community. Although the Fairness Doctrine is history, the needs it addressed, namely ensuring that television stations effectively dealt with controversial issues and issues of importance, remain self-evident.

Remedy

We ask the FCC to confront the toxicity of television news programming on KWGN-TV and send a strong message to the local TV news industry. We offer the following ideas for remedy as conditions for re-licensure:

1. Require KWGN-TV to air Public Service Announcements during local newscasts, alerting the public about TV news' unbalanced and unhealthy diet of information and its potentially harmful side-effects.

2. Mandate daily programming on KWGN-TV to teach "media literacy" on prime-time television to both children and adults. This would include such topics as decoding advertising messages, media violence effects, media ownership and profit information, candid discussion of propaganda and manipulation methods, alternative sources of news information, viewing habits and the like.

3. Mandatory education and training for KWGN-TV's news staff regarding media violence effects, including exploitive, gratuitous, copy-cat and manipulative violence. This training would be similar to sensitivity training around issues of race and gender.

4. Require KWGN-TV to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving local TV news' coverage of local elections.

Submitted by:

Paul Klite, Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Media Watch
P.O. Box 18858
Denver, CO 80218
February 17, 1998

Attachments

1. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #1, January, 1994.
2. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #2, April, 1994.
3. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #3, July, 1994.
4. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #4, October, 1994.
5. A Day in the Life of Local TV News In America, January, 1995.
6. Pavlov's TV Dogs, September, 1995.
7. Baaad News, February, 1997.
8. Local TV News, Getting Away with Murder, Press/Politics 2(2), 1997.
9. Local TV News Ignores Local Elections, Television Quarterly 28(4), 1997.

Petition to Deny the Re-licensing of KCNC-TV

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In the Matter of
Re-licensing of )
Denver, Colorado )
Television station )
KCNC-TV, )

Petition to deny

Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado not-for-profit corporation, files this Petition to Deny the re-licensing of Denver, Colorado television station KCNC-TV, Channel 4 on February 17, 1998.

KCNC-TV is broadcasting daily local news programs that are harming the citizens of Colorado. We ask the FCC, pursuant to its legal charge to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest," to protect us.

This Petition will document that local newscasts on KCNC-TV are severely unbalanced, with excessive coverage of violent topics and trivial events, and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wide range of stories and vital social issues. In addition, newscasts present stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and minorities. The amount of advertising is excessive. Like any unbalanced diet, TV news can have serious health effects.

We believe the FCC has a clear responsibility to act to protect citizens from this unhealthy diet of information. FCC action is not a question of censorship; no one wants the government to regulate news content or interfere with broadcasters' First Amendment guarantees. The issue is beyond bad journalism, although a crisis is currently occurring in journalistic ethics and values, and industry leaders, like Walter Cronkite, Robert McNeill, Ted Turner and Dan Rather, are speaking out against the forces of tabloid journalism. This is a public health issue we call "toxic television news."

The evidence for these assertions comes from a series of content analyses of local newscasts conducted between 1994 to 1997 by Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado non-profit activist organization. Listed as Attachments to this Petition, these studies include three one-week-long content analyses, three one-day national studies which include KCNC-TV and three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 elections.

Toxic Television News

The programming components of the Toxic TV News syndrome are:

a. Excessive and exploitive violence

It is not uncommon for half the news each night on KCNC-TV to be about violent topics. The table below summarizes the percent of the local news' air-time, that dealt with violent topics in our seven content analyses. This "Mayhem Index" is the percentage of the news devoted to stories about crime, disasters, war and terrorism. The 23 evening newscasts on KCNC-TV included in the seven surveys have an over-all average 54 percent mayhem. Additionally, we note that about half the air-time devoted to crime coverage is about murders. Other violent crimes are also popular news fare. This is not an accurate mirror of reality. Murder is one of the least frequent crimes committed.

	Mayhem Index
	(Percent of the News About Violent Topics)
	Station: KCNC-TV
Survey #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date	1/94	4/94	7/94	10/94	1/95	8/95	2/97
% Mayhem	75	60	69	27	53	26	41

b. Deficient and inadequate news coverage

With the news window dominated by violent topics, vital issues of concern to our community are almost invisible in the news on KCNC-TV. These include the environment, local elections, arts, science, education, poverty, AIDS, children and others (see attachments for average air-time devoted to these topics). By any measure of balanced reporting, television station KCNC-TV is failing the public interest.

Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in local election coverage. During the 1994 election cycle, we monitored KCNC-TV, during the week of October 10-14 (5 total newscasts). Election news averaged six seconds per show.

Two years later, we conducted three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 ballot. In Colorado, numerous ballot initiatives as well as a complete set of state legislative and local races were on the ballot. We monitored KCNC-TV on September 11, October 2 and October 23 (see Attachment #9), eight, five and two weeks, respectively, before election day. KCNC-TV, on its 35 minute newscasts at 10 p.m., broadcast six election stories out of a total of approximately 36 news items on the three programs. Four of these were for the U.S. Presidential campaign. Therefore most of the meager political "information" on the local news was not about local election contests. Only two election ads were shown, both for ballot initiatives .

c. Racial and gender stereotyping and polarization

Gender and racial diversity are additional areas where newscasts are out of balance. People of olor are often stereotyped as perpetrators of crime in newscasts, presenting a negative role model to viewers. Women and minorities are still under-represented on newscasts as authorities, experts and leaders. That is not in the public interest. The combined data for four Denver stations, including KCNC-TV, is summarized in the tables below. (National data is in the the attachments.

	Ethnic Appearances
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
Category	Race
	White		Black		Latino		All Others
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Anchor	14	88	1	6	0	0	1	6
Reporter	93	83	7	6	11	9	1	1
Sources	227	80	40	14	13	5	0	0
Perpetrator	20	32	34	54	9	14	0	0
Victim	78	83	7	8	6	7	1	1

	Males and Females in the News
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
	Male		Female
Category	#	%	#	%
Anchor	11	69	5	31
Reporter	66	62	46	38
Source	218	77	65	23
Perpetrator	61	94	5	6
Victim	41	46	48	54

d. Excess commercialism, triviality and manipulation

KCNC-TV devotes a higher portion of evening newscast air-time to commercial messages than TV stations in most U.S. cities. In October, 1994, KCNC-TV newscasts contained more ads than news. In the January, 1995 study (Attachment #5), KCNC-TV was ranked #2 in the country for the total time devoted to advertising. In the February, 1997 study (Attachment #7), KCNC-TV 's newscast contained 33.7 percent commercials, ranking them #16.

Our surveys also quantify the amount of "fluff" in newscasts. Chit-chat, teases, soft news and celebrity stories occupy 20-40 percent as much air-time as news and further reduce the time available for substantive information.

Discussion

Television content is capable of producing both acute harm, as demonstrated in the recent outbreak of television induced epilepsy in Japan, and chronic toxicity. In this country, the V-chip and ratings system for TV programming are a clear acknowledgment by our society of the chronic harmful effects of distorted television imagery, especially violence. (News programs are specifically excluded from ratings.) Decades of research and thousands of studies, going back to the conclusions of George Gerbner and the Surgeon General in the 1960s, document the danger to the public. Many health and educational organizations have spoken out on the cumulative impacts of media violence:

"Television violence is a risk factor threatening the health of young people." American Medical Association, 1992

"Watching of television violence by children causes greater aggressiveness. The impact of TV violence may surface years later." American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 1989

"Viewing televised violence may lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children." American Psychological Association, 1985

"The National Parent Teachers Associations demand ...reduction in the amount of violence shown on television." National PTA, 1989

Excess violence in TV news remains a formula on station KCNC-TV even as U.S. crime rates fall. The cliche about local TV news is "if it bleeds, it leads," and we emphasize that on the TV news the blood is real. Media violence negatively influences children's learning, aggression and empathy. Adults, too, are not immune and can become cynical, fearful or desensitized by relentlessly violent media messages. Seeing one more murder on TV news doesn't make most of us go out and commit murder. It's more like a another dose of one part-per-billion of alienation. Over time, however, the effects are cumulative. You know the average child has seen thousands of murders and hundreds of thousands of acts of violence on television by the time they reach puberty.

A slick and profitable formula has captured the local TV news at station KCNC-TV. Night after night, audiences are terrified and titillated, aroused and manipulated -- but not informed. Toxic TV news syndrome effects people of all ages, genders, races and geographical areas. Children are especially vulnerable, as are heavy TV users. Paraphrasing James Madison, "Without good information, democracy becomes a farce or a tragedy or both."

The offending agent is television news' distorted depiction of our culture, producing both exaggeration of many of our basest images and neglect of others. Like an unbalanced diet, which gradually leads to serious illness, our local TV news presents a world blown out of proportion. (We note the simple objective measurements presented here do not address other important issues of balance in the news, such as political bias and spin. Since the Fairness Doctrine and equal time provisions were voided ten years ago, the potential for abuse in these areas has, if anything, increased.)

While KCNC-TV is part of a national trend towards more and more sensational newscasts, some television stations are acknowledging and addressing the need for radical changes in local TV news. KVUE-TV, Austin TX, in response to focus groups indicating citizens are fed up with violent newscasts, has adopted guidelines for reducing the reporting of sensational crime stories. (see Attachment #7, page 4).

A host of significant symptoms have been attributed to distorted TV news, including viewer alienation, cynicism, violent behavior (including copy-cat crimes), intimidation, passivity, ignorance, racial polarization and disempowerment. Together these constitute a toxic stew of pervasive negative influences in our culture.

It is not in the public interest for KCNC-TV to harm the public or exploit or misinform them. Neither is it in the public interest to cultivate a mass audience that does not vote, mistrusts their neighbors, is afraid to go out at night and is disconnected from their community. Although the Fairness Doctrine is history, the needs it addressed, namely ensuring that television stations effectively dealt with controversial issues and issues of importance, remain self-evident.

Remedy

We ask the FCC to confront the toxicity of television news programming on KCNC-TV and send a strong message to the local TV news industry. We offer the following ideas for remedy as conditions for re-licensure:

1. Require KCNC-TV to air Public Service Announcements during local newscasts, alerting the public about TV news' unbalanced and unhealthy diet of information and its potentially harmful side-effects.

2. Mandate daily programming on KCNC-TV to teach "media literacy" on prime-time television to both children and adults. This would include such topics as decoding advertising messages, media violence effects, media ownership and profit information, candid discussion of propaganda and manipulation methods, alternative sources of news information, viewing habits and the like.

3. Mandatory education and training for KCNC-TV's news staff regarding media violence effects, including exploitive, gratuitous, copy-cat and manipulative violence. This training would be similar to sensitivity training around issues of race and gender.

4. Require KCNC-TV to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving local TV news' coverage of local elections.

Submitted by:

Paul Klite, Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Media Watch
P.O. Box 18858
Denver, CO 80218
February 17, 1998

Attachments

1. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #1, January, 1994.
2. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #2, April, 1994.
3. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #3, July, 1994.
4. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #4, October, 1994.
5. A Day in the Life of Local TV News In America, January, 1995.
6. Pavlov's TV Dogs, September, 1995.
7. Baaad News, February, 1997.
8. Local TV News, Getting Away with Murder, Press/Politics 2(2), 1997.
9. Local TV News Ignores Local Elections, Television Quarterly 28(4), 1997.

Petition to Deny the Re-licensing of KMGH-TV

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In the Matter of
Re-licensing of )
Denver, Colorado )
Television station )
KMGH-TV, )

Petition to deny

Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado not-for-profit corporation, files this Petition to Deny the re-licensing of Denver, Colorado television station KMGH-TV, Channel 7 on February 17, 1998.

KMGH-TV is broadcasting daily local news programs that are harming the citizens of Colorado. We ask the FCC, pursuant to its legal charge to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest," to protect us.

This Petition will document that local newscasts on KMGH-TV are severely unbalanced, with excessive coverage of violent topics and trivial events, and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wide range of stories and vital social issues. In addition, newscasts present stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and minorities. The amount of advertising is excessive. Like any unbalanced diet, TV news can have serious health effects.

We believe the FCC has a clear responsibility to act to protect citizens from this unhealthy diet of information. FCC action is not a question of censorship; no one wants the government to regulate news content or interfere with broadcasters' First Amendment guarantees. The issue is beyond bad journalism, although a crisis is currently occurring in journalistic ethics and values, and industry leaders, like Walter Cronkite, Robert McNeill, Ted Turner and Dan Rather, are speaking out against the forces of tabloid journalism. This is a public health issue we call "toxic television news."

The evidence for these assertions comes from a series of content analyses of local newscasts conducted between 1994 to 1997 by Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado non-profit activist organization. Listed as Attachments to this Petition, these studies include four one-week-long content analyses, three one-day national studies which include KMGH-TV and three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 elections.

Toxic Television News

The programming components of the Toxic TV News syndrome are:

a. Excessive and exploitive violence

It is not uncommon for half the news each night on KMGH-TV to be about violent topics. The table below summarizes the percent of the local news' air-time, that dealt with violent topics in our seven content analyses. This "Mayhem Index" is the percentage of the news devoted to stories about crime, disasters, war and terrorism. The 23 evening newscasts on KMGH-TV included in the seven surveys have an over-all average 55 percent mayhem. Additionally, we note that about half the air-time devoted to crime coverage is about murders. Other violent crimes are also popular news fare. This is not an accurate mirror of reality. Murder is one of the least frequent crimes committed.

	Mayhem Index
	(Percent of the News About Violent Topics)
	Station: KMGH-TV
Survey #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date	1/94	4/94	7/94	10/94	1/95	8/95	2/97
% Mayhem	74	66	59	38	47	28	60

b. Deficient and inadequate news coverage

With the news window dominated by violent topics, vital issues of concern to our community are almost invisible in the news on KMGH-TV. These include the environment, local elections, arts, science, education, poverty, AIDS, children and others (see attachments for average air-time devoted to these topics). By any measure of balanced reporting, television station KMGH-TV is failing the public interest.

Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in local election coverage. During the 1994 election cycle, we monitored Denver channel KMGH-TV during the week of October 10-14. Zero election news was noted in the five newscasts.

Two years later, we conducted three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 ballot. In Colorado, numerous ballot initiatives as well as a complete set of state legislative and local races were on the ballot. We monitored KMGH-TV on September 11, October 2 and October 23 (see Attachment #9), eight, five and two weeks, respectively, before election day. On the 35 minute news shows at 10 p.m., KMGH-TV aired just four election news items out of approximately 35 stories on three newscasts. Three of the four concerned the U.S. President race.. Of 12 ads on these shows, four were for U.S. President, five for U.S. Congress and three for ballot initiatives..

Therefore, most of the meager political "information" on the local news was not about local election contests, and there were more political ads about local election contests than election-related news items.

c. Racial and gender stereotyping and polarization

Gender and racial diversity are additional areas where newscasts are out of balance. People of olor are often stereotyped as perpetrators of crime in newscasts, presenting a negative role model to viewers. Women and minorities are still under-represented on newscasts as authorities, experts and leaders. That is not in the public interest. The combined data for four Denver stations, including KMGH-TV, is summarized in the tables below. (National data is in the the attachments.

	Ethnic Appearances
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
Category	Race
	White		Black		Latino		All Others
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Anchor	14	88	1	6	0	0	1	6
Reporter	93	83	7	6	11	9	1	1
Sources	227	80	40	14	13	5	0	0
Perpetrator	20	32	34	54	9	14	0	0
Victim	78	83	7	8	6	7	1	1

	Males and Females in the News
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
	Male		Female
Category	#	%	#	%
Anchor	11	69	5	31
Reporter	66	62	46	38
Source	218	77	65	23
Perpetrator	61	94	5	6
Victim	41	46	48	54

d. Excess commercialism, triviality and manipulation

KMGH-TV devotes a higher portion of evening newscast air-time to commercial messages than TV stations in most U.S. cities. In our 1997 survey, ads comprised 34.6 percent of the show, the 10th highest ranking noted. In the January, 1995 study (Attachment #5), KMGH-TV ranked #4 in the country for the total time devoted to advertising.

Our surveys also quantify the amount of "fluff" in newscasts. Chit-chat, teases, soft news and celebrity stories on KMGH -TV occupied 32.6 percent as much air-time as news. These trivial elements further reduce the time available for substantive information.

Discussion

Television content is capable of producing both acute harm, as demonstrated in the recent outbreak of television induced epilepsy in Japan, and chronic toxicity. In this country, the V-chip and ratings system for TV programming are a clear acknowledgment by our society of the chronic harmful effects of distorted television imagery, especially violence. (News programs are specifically excluded from ratings.) Decades of research and thousands of studies, going back to the conclusions of George Gerbner and the Surgeon General in the 1960s, document the danger to the public. Many health and educational organizations have spoken out on the cumulative impacts of media violence:

"Television violence is a risk factor threatening the health of young people." American Medical Association, 1992

"Watching of television violence by children causes greater aggressiveness. The impact of TV violence may surface years later." American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 1989

"Viewing televised violence may lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children." American Psychological Association, 1985

"The National Parent Teachers Associations demand ...reduction in the amount of violence shown on television." National PTA, 1989

Excess violence in TV news remains a formula on station KMGH-TV even as U.S. crime rates fall. The cliche about local TV news is "if it bleeds, it leads," and we emphasize that on the TV news the blood is real. Media violence negatively influences children's learning, aggression and empathy. Adults, too, are not immune and can become cynical, fearful or desensitized by relentlessly violent media messages. Seeing one more murder on TV news doesn't make most of us go out and commit murder. It's more like a another dose of one part-per-billion of alienation. Over time, however, the effects are cumulative. You know the average child has seen thousands of murders and hundreds of thousands of acts of violence on television by the time they reach puberty.

A slick and profitable formula has captured the local TV news at station KMGH-TV. Night after night, audiences are terrified and titillated, aroused and manipulated -- but not informed. Toxic TV news syndrome effects people of all ages, genders, races and geographical areas. Children are especially vulnerable, as are heavy TV users. Paraphrasing James Madison, "Without good information, democracy becomes a farce or a tragedy or both."

The offending agent is television news' distorted depiction of our culture, producing both exaggeration of many of our basest images and neglect of others. Like an unbalanced diet, which gradually leads to serious illness, our local TV news presents a world blown out of proportion. (We note the simple objective measurements presented here do not address other important issues of balance in the news, such as political bias and spin. Since the Fairness Doctrine and equal time provisions were voided ten years ago, the potential for abuse in these areas has, if anything, increased.)

While KMGH-TV is part of a national trend towards more and more sensational newscasts, some television stations are acknowledging and addressing the need for radical changes in local TV news. KVUE-TV, Austin TX, in response to focus groups indicating citizens are fed up with violent newscasts, has adopted guidelines for reducing the reporting of sensational crime stories. (see Attachment #7, page 4).

A host of significant symptoms have been attributed to distorted TV news, including viewer alienation, cynicism, violent behavior (including copy-cat crimes), intimidation, passivity, ignorance, racial polarization and disempowerment. Together these constitute a toxic stew of pervasive negative influences in our culture.

It is not in the public interest for KMGH-TV to harm the public or exploit or misinform them. Neither is it in the public interest to cultivate a mass audience that does not vote, mistrusts their neighbors, is afraid to go out at night and is disconnected from their community. Although the Fairness Doctrine is history, the needs it addressed, namely ensuring that television stations effectively dealt with controversial issues and issues of importance, remain self-evident.

Remedy

We ask the FCC to confront the toxicity of television news programming on KMGH-TV and send a strong message to the local TV news industry. We offer the following ideas for remedy as conditions for re-licensure:

1. Require KMGH-TV to air Public Service Announcements during local newscasts, alerting the public about TV news' unbalanced and unhealthy diet of information and its potentially harmful side-effects.

2. Mandate daily programming on KMGH-TV to teach "media literacy" on prime-time television to both children and adults. This would include such topics as decoding advertising messages, media violence effects, media ownership and profit information, candid discussion of propaganda and manipulation methods, alternative sources of news information, viewing habits and the like.

3. Mandatory education and training for KMGH-TV's news staff regarding media violence effects, including exploitive, gratuitous, copy-cat and manipulative violence. This training would be similar to sensitivity training around issues of race and gender.

4. Require KMGH-TV to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving local TV news' coverage of local elections.

Submitted by:

Paul Klite, Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Media Watch
P.O. Box 18858
Denver, CO 80218
February 17, 1998

Attachments

1. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #1, January, 1994.
2. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #2, April, 1994.
3. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #3, July, 1994.
4. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #4, October, 1994.
5. A Day in the Life of Local TV News In America, January, 1995.
6. Pavlov's TV Dogs, September, 1995.
7. Baaad News, February, 1997.
8. Local TV News, Getting Away with Murder, Press/Politics 2(2), 1997.
9. Local TV News Ignores Local Elections, Television Quarterly 28(4), 1997.

Petition to Deny the Re-licensing of KUSA-TV

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In the Matter of
Re-licensing of )
Denver, Colorado )
Television station )
KUSA-TV, )

Petition to deny

Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado not-for-profit corporation, files this Petition to Deny the re-licensing of Denver, Colorado television station KUSA-TV, Channel 9 on February 17, 1998.

KUSA-TV is broadcasting daily local news programs that are harming the citizens of Colorado. We ask the FCC, pursuant to its legal charge to regulate broadcasting "in the public interest," to protect us.

This Petition will document that local newscasts on KUSA-TV are severely unbalanced, with excessive coverage of violent topics and trivial events, and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wide range of stories and vital social issues. In addition, newscasts present stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and minorities. The amount of advertising is excessive. Like any unbalanced diet, TV news can have serious health effects.

We believe the FCC has a clear responsibility to act to protect citizens from this unhealthy diet of information. FCC action is not a question of censorship; no one wants the government to regulate news content or interfere with broadcasters' First Amendment guarantees. The issue is beyond bad journalism, although a crisis is currently occurring in journalistic ethics and values, and industry leaders, like Walter Cronkite, Robert McNeill, Ted Turner and Dan Rather, are speaking out against the forces of tabloid journalism. This is a public health issue we call "toxic television news."

The evidence for these assertions comes from a series of content analyses of local newscasts conducted between 1994 to 1997 by Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Colorado non-profit activist organization. Listed as Attachments to this Petition, these studies include four one-week-long content analyses, three one-day national studies which include KMGH-TV and three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 elections.

Toxic Television News

The programming components of the Toxic TV News syndrome are:

a. Excessive and exploitive violence

It is not uncommon for half the news each night on KUSA-TV to be about violent topics. The table below summarizes the percent of the local news' air-time, that dealt with violent topics in our seven content analyses. This "Mayhem Index" is the percentage of the news devoted to stories about crime, disasters, war and terrorism. The 23 evening newscasts on KUSA-TV included in the seven surveys have an over-all average 47 percent mayhem. Additionally, we note that about half the air-time devoted to crime coverage is about murders. Other violent crimes are also popular news fare. This is not an accurate mirror of reality. Murder is one of the least frequent crimes committed.

	Mayhem Index
	(Percent of the News About Violent Topics)
	Station: KUSA-TV
Survey #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date	1/94	4/94	7/94	10/94	1/95	8/95	2/97
% Mayhem	61	63	49	28	46	21	26

b. Deficient and inadequate news coverage

With the news window dominated by violent topics, vital issues of concern to our community are almost invisible in the news on KUSA-TV. These include the environment, local elections, arts, science, education, poverty, AIDS, children and others (see attachments for average air-time devoted to these topics). By any measure of balanced reporting, television station KUSA-TV is failing the public interest.

Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in local election coverage. During the 1994 election cycle, we monitored Denver channel KUSA-TV, during the week of October 10-14 (5 total newscasts). Election news averaged less than one minute per show.

Two years later, we conducted three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 ballot. In Colorado, numerous ballot initiatives as well as a complete set of state legislative and local races were on the ballot. We monitored KUSA-TV on September 11, October 2 and October 23 (see Attachment #9), eight, five and two weeks, respectively, before election day. KUSA-TV, on their 35 minute 10 p.m. news show, broadcast six election news items out of approximately 35 stories on the three broadcasts. Five of the six concerned the U.S. President race. Only one election ad was noted - for U.S. Congress.

Therefore, most of the meager political "information" on the local news was not about local election contests, and there were more political ads about local election contests than election-related news items.

c. Racial and gender stereotyping and polarization

Gender and racial diversity are additional areas where newscasts are out of balance. People of olor are often stereotyped as perpetrators of crime in newscasts, presenting a negative role model to viewers. Women and minorities are still under-represented on newscasts as authorities, experts and leaders. That is not in the public interest. The combined data for four Denver stations, including KUSA-TV, is summarized in the tables below. (National data is in the the attachments.

	Ethnic Appearances
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
Category	Race
	White		Black		Latino		All Others
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Anchor	14	88	1	6	0	0	1	6
Reporter	93	83	7	6	11	9	1	1
Sources	227	80	40	14	13	5	0	0
Perpetrator	20	32	34	54	9	14	0	0
Victim	78	83	7	8	6	7	1	1

	Males and Females in the News
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
	Male		Female
Category	#	%	#	%
Anchor	11	69	5	31
Reporter	66	62	46	38
Source	218	77	65	23
Perpetrator	61	94	5	6
Victim	41	46	48	54

d. Excess commercialism, triviality and manipulation

KUSA-TV devotes a higher portion of evening newscast air-time to commercial messages than TV stations in most U.S. cities. In October, 1994, KUSA-TV newscasts contained more ads than news. In the January, 1995 study (Attachment #5), KUSA-TV ranked #1 in the country for the total time devoted to advertising. In the February, 1997 study (Attachment #7), ads comprised 32.0 percent of the show.

Our surveys also quantify the amount of "fluff" in newscasts. Chit-chat, teases, soft news and celebrity stories on KUSA -TV occupied 32 percent as much air-time as news. These trivial elements further reduce the time available for substantive information. In the week before this years Super Bowl, KUSA-TV's evening newscasts averaged 12 full minutes per show of Super Bowl coverage.

Discussion

Television content is capable of producing both acute harm, as demonstrated in the recent outbreak of television induced epilepsy in Japan, and chronic toxicity. In this country, the V-chip and ratings system for TV programming are a clear acknowledgment by our society of the chronic harmful effects of distorted television imagery, especially violence. (News programs are specifically excluded from ratings.) Decades of research and thousands of studies, going back to the conclusions of George Gerbner and the Surgeon General in the 1960s, document the danger to the public. Many health and educational organizations have spoken out on the cumulative impacts of media violence:

"Television violence is a risk factor threatening the health of young people." American Medical Association, 1992

"Watching of television violence by children causes greater aggressiveness. The impact of TV violence may surface years later." American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 1989

"Viewing televised violence may lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behaviors, particularly in children." American Psychological Association, 1985

"The National Parent Teachers Associations demand ...reduction in the amount of violence shown on television." National PTA, 1989

Excess violence in TV news remains a formula on station KUSA-TV even as U.S. crime rates fall. The cliche about local TV news is "if it bleeds, it leads," and we emphasize that on the TV news the blood is real. Media violence negatively influences children's learning, aggression and empathy. Adults, too, are not immune and can become cynical, fearful or desensitized by relentlessly violent media messages. Seeing one more murder on TV news doesn't make most of us go out and commit murder. It's more like a another dose of one part-per-billion of alienation. Over time, however, the effects are cumulative. You know the average child has seen thousands of murders and hundreds of thousands of acts of violence on television by the time they reach puberty.

A slick and profitable formula has captured the local TV news at station KUSA-TV. Night after night, audiences are terrified and titillated, aroused and manipulated -- but not informed. Toxic TV news syndrome effects people of all ages, genders, races and geographical areas. Children are especially vulnerable, as are heavy TV users. Paraphrasing James Madison, "Without good information, democracy becomes a farce or a tragedy or both."

The offending agent is television news' distorted depiction of our culture, producing both exaggeration of many of our basest images and neglect of others. Like an unbalanced diet, which gradually leads to serious illness, our local TV news presents a world blown out of proportion. (We note the simple objective measurements presented here do not address other important issues of balance in the news, such as political bias and spin. Since the Fairness Doctrine and equal time provisions were voided ten years ago, the potential for abuse in these areas has, if anything, increased.)

While KUSA-TV is part of a national trend towards more and more sensational newscasts, some television stations are acknowledging and addressing the need for radical changes in local TV news. KVUE-TV, Austin TX, in response to focus groups indicating citizens are fed up with violent newscasts, has adopted guidelines for reducing the reporting of sensational crime stories. (see Attachment #7, page 4).

A host of significant symptoms have been attributed to distorted TV news, including viewer alienation, cynicism, violent behavior (including copy-cat crimes), intimidation, passivity, ignorance, racial polarization and disempowerment. Together these constitute a toxic stew of pervasive negative influences in our culture.

It is not in the public interest for KUSA-TV to harm the public or exploit or misinform them. Neither is it in the public interest to cultivate a mass audience that does not vote, mistrusts their neighbors, is afraid to go out at night and is disconnected from their community. Although the Fairness Doctrine is history, the needs it addressed, namely ensuring that television stations effectively dealt with controversial issues and issues of importance, remain self-evident.

Remedy

We ask the FCC to confront the toxicity of television news programming on KUSA-TV and send a strong message to the local TV news industry. We offer the following ideas for remedy as conditions for re-licensure:

1. Require KUSA-TV to air Public Service Announcements during local newscasts, alerting the public about TV news' unbalanced and unhealthy diet of information and its potentially harmful side-effects.

2. Mandate daily programming on KUSA-TV to teach "media literacy" on prime-time television to both children and adults. This would include such topics as decoding advertising messages, media violence effects, media ownership and profit information, candid discussion of propaganda and manipulation methods, alternative sources of news information, viewing habits and the like.

3. Mandatory education and training for KUSA-TV's news staff regarding media violence effects, including exploitive, gratuitous, copy-cat and manipulative violence. This training would be similar to sensitivity training around issues of race and gender.

4. Require KUSA-TV to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving local TV news' coverage of local elections.

Submitted by:

Paul Klite, Executive Director
Rocky Mountain Media Watch
P.O. Box 18858
Denver, CO 80218
February 17, 1998

Attachments

1. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #1, January, 1994.
2. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #2, April, 1994.
3. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #3, July, 1994.
4. Denver Local TV News, Content Analysis #4, October, 1994.
5. A Day in the Life of Local TV News In America, January, 1995.
6. Pavlov's TV Dogs, September, 1995.
7. Baaad News, February, 1997.
8. Local TV News, Getting Away with Murder, Press/Politics 2(2), 1997.
9. Local TV News Ignores Local Elections, Television Quarterly 28(4), 1997.

Composite Petition:
KWGN-TV, KCNC-TV, KMGH-TV, KUSA-TV

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In the Matter of Re-licensing of Denver, Colorado Television stations KWGN-T, KCNC-TV, KMGH-TV, KUSA-TV

Individual Petitions against re-licensing of these four Denver stations will be filed. The composite data in the Petitions are as follows.

a. Excessive and exploitive violence

It is not uncommon for half the nightly news on these Colorado stations to be about violent topics. The table below summarizes the percent of the local news' air-time, by station, that dealt with violent topics in our seven content analyses. This "Mayhem Index" is the percentage of the news devoted to stories about crime, disasters, war and terrorism. The 87 evening newscasts on all four channels included in the seven surveys have an over-all average 52 percent mayhem. There are only minor differences between stations. Additionally, we note that about half the air-time devoted to crime coverage is about murders. Other violent crimes are also popular news fare. This is not an accurate mirror of reality. Murder is one of the least frequent crimes committed.

	Mayhem Index
	(Percent of the News About Violent Topics)
Survey #	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Date	1/94	4/94	7/94	10/94	1/95	8/95	2/97
% Mayhem
KWGN-TV	-	56	63	22	33	26	49
KCNC-TV	75	60	69	27	53	26	41
KMGH-TV	74	66	59	38	47	28	60
KUSA-TV	61	63	49	28	46	21	26

b. Deficient and inadequate news coverage

With the news window dominated by violent topics, vital issues of concern to our community are almost invisible in the news. These include the environment, local elections, arts, science, education, poverty, AIDS, children and others (see attachments for average air-time devoted to these topics). By any measure of balanced reporting, the television stations are failing the public interest.

Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in local election coverage. During the 1994 election cycle, we monitored Denver channels KWGN-TV, KCNC-TV, KMGH-TV and KUSA-TV during the week of October 10-14 (20 total newscasts). Election news comprised less than one percent (0.79 percent) of the news on all stations, averaging 17 seconds per show. Fifty-seven political ads were shown on these same shows.

Two years later, we conducted three national surveys leading up to the November 1996 ballot. In Colorado, numerous ballot initiatives as well as a complete set of state legislative and local races were on the ballot. On September 11, October 2 and October 23 (see Attachment #9), eight, five and two weeks, respectively, before election day, the Denver stations broadcast the following election items:

KWGN-TV, on its one-hour long 9 p.m. newscasts, broadcast six election stories out of a total of approximately 65 news items on the three programs. Five of these concerned the U.S. President race. Twelve political ads in these same three shows were predominantly for U.S. President (5 ads) and U.S. Congress (5 ads).

KCNC-TV, on its 35 minute newscasts at 10 p.m., broadcast six election stories out of a total of approximately 36 news items on the three programs. Four of these were for the U.S. Presidential campaign. Only two election ads were shown, both for ballot initiatives.

KMGH-TV, also a 35 minute news show at 10 p.m., aired four election news items out of approximately 35 stories on three newscasts. Three of the four concerned the U.S. President race.. Of 12 ads on these shows, four were for U.S. President, five for U.S. Congress and three for ballot initiatives.

KUSA-TV, on their 35 minute 10 p.m. news show, broadcast six election news items out of approximately 35 stories on the three broadcasts. Five of the six concerned the U.S. President race. Only one election ad was noted - for U.S. Congress.

The totals for these four Denver stations were 22 election stories out of approximately 170 news items in 12 shows. Seventeen of these 22 stories concerned the Presidential race, not local elections. Therefore, most of the meager political "information" on the local news was not about local election contests The same newscasts contained 27 political ads, 9 for president, 11 for congressional races and 7 for local issues and races. Thus, there were more political ads about local election contests than election-related news items.

c. Racial and gender stereotyping and polarization

Gender and racial diversity are additional areas where newscasts are out of balance. People of color are often stereotyped as perpetrators of crime in newscasts, presenting a negative role model to viewers. Women and minorities are still under-represented on newscasts as authorities, experts and leaders. That is not in the public interest. The data for Denver stations is summarized in the tables below.

	Ethnic Appearances
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
Category	Race
	White		Black		Latino		All Others
	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%
Anchor	14	88	1	6	0	0	1	6
Reporter	93	83	7	6	11	9	1	1
Sources	227	80	40	14	13	5	0	0
Perpetrator	20	32	34	54	9	14	0	0
Victim	78	83	7	8	6	7	1	1

	Males and Females in the News
	Denver Channels 2, 4, 7, & 9, Summer/ Fall, 1994
	Male		Female
Category	#	%	#	%
Anchor	11	69	5	31
Reporter	66	62	46	38
Source	218	77	65	23
Perpetrator	61	94	5	6
Victim	41	46	48	54

d. Excess commercialism, triviality and manipulation

The Denver stations devote a higher portion of evening newscast air-time to commercial messages than TV stations in most cities in the U.S. In October, 1994, KCNC-TV and KUSA-TV newscasts contained more ads than news. In the January, 1995 study, Denver channels KUSA-TV, KCNC-TV and KMGH-TV were ranked #1, #2 and #4 in the country, respectively, for the total time devoted to advertising. In the February, 1997 study, all the Denver stations were above the national average for advertising time.

Our surveys also quantify the amount of "fluff" in newscasts. Chit-chat, teases, soft news and celebrity stories occupy 30-40 percent as much air-time as news and further reduce the time available for substantive information.

Each Petition discusses the side-effects of the toxic television news syndrome and asks the FCC to confront these Colorado stations and send a strong message to the local TV news industry. We offer the following ideas for remedy as conditions for re-licensure:

1. Require stations to air PSAs during local newscasts, alerting the public about TV news' unbalanced and unhealthy diet of information and its potentially harmful side-effects.

2. Mandate daily programming to teach "media literacy" on prime-time television to both children and adults. This would include such topics as decoding advertising messages, media violence effects, media ownership and profit information, candid discussion of propaganda and manipulation methods, alternative sources of news information, viewing habits and the like.

3. Mandatory education and training for news staffs regarding media violence effects, including exploitive, gratuitous, copy-cat and manipulative violence. This training would be similar to sensitivity training around issues of race and gender.

4. Require stations to develop a plan, and make it public, for improving local TV news' coverage of local elections.