"Do most stations do a good job of addressing the real local issues that affect viewers lives and their community, or is this an area where they need to improve?"


Almost 30% of all viewers complain about this issue, and more than half of them feel strongly about it (particularly men, 18-24s, 50-64s, and minorities).






What Viewers Say about Issue-Oriented Coverage

Viewers clearly want stations to focus more on the actual issues that affect their local communities. Ideally, this coverage would be free of sensationalism and contain factual, relevant information that's both interesting and informative. "Your community is where you live, it's what you're concerned with...People want to know what's going on around them....I watch the news to see how it's affecting ME...We're the viewing audience, and if they wanna keep us, they're gonna need to keep our interest."

When viewers give examples of what they mean by local issues, they mention pending legislation, election issues, political candidates, parades, school issues, crime problems, Walkathons (and other participatory events), how to help local people in need, etc. Any station which questions whether this is "socially acceptable response" or otherwise doubts the sincerity of these viewers would clearly benefit from hearing the conviction behind these comments:

More In-Depth & Informative — "People need to be more informed. They don't get enough information when it's time to go vote. Half the time, they don't know who's running, what premise they're running on, etc. Instead, they're seeing 50 replays of why someone isn't going to jail...If somebody really needs help, we want to know more in-depth...A lot of issues are skirted over and not really addressed...Years ago, they used to cover a lot of the [high school] sporting events, you might get a [local] parade or local news on a plant shutdown. Now, they glance over it, but don't really cover it in-depth the way they would."

Too Much of the News Is Irrelevant — "We have a lot of garbage that doesn't even pertain to news, but they still put it on the news. A lot of things they concentrate on don't really apply to me at all...They just keep dwelling on the killings...It's all about crime and sensationalism. They report news that doesn't affect me or my community...I could care less about what happens to some movie star...We don't need to know the personal lives of the President, etc...The news seems like a soap opera. We know how real people act, because we encounter them each day, and we know real people don't conduct themselves like that...There's a lot on the news I couldn't care much about...There's a lot of happy news that doesn't really address things you need to make decisions about, who you choose to vote for, etc...They fill the newscast up with filler, it seems, and don't really hit the real issues...On the news, there's a lot of unnecessary stories about local things that don't really matter. Perhaps they should focus on more stories that're newsworthy...A lot of the stuff they put on there is nonsense...[Cover] things that're important, but not necessarily sensational. We need to know more about the school systems, the ratings in the school systems, things of that nature."

For many viewers, this issue only underscores their need for broader coverage of the entire viewing area:

Better Coverage of Smaller Communities Within the Market — We need more localized news as far as the different areas. [The local newscasts are] dealing with a very large area, but they need to find ways to spread that out and do more stories on [suburban areas]...Sometimes they go way out into different areas, and they forget the communities we live in. We don't know what's going on in our communities, whether it's gang related, or a business shutting down, or a politician doing something in our area. They just focus on the big major cities and forget about the little communities around them..I hear more about what's going on outside of our city than inside...They're not helping us with our sense of community, so anything they can do to localize and give more news from remote areas."

This issue is also drives viewers who want all of their local newscasts to be entirely local in scope, with no regional, national or world news:

The Focus Should Be More Locally-Oriented — "People need to know what's going on in their community...[The news we get is] all out-of-town or out-of-state...You wanna know about your own locality...We don't care what happens somewhere else...We need to know what's going on here, not anywhere else...You wanna know what's going on in your area, not really the worldwide...What can we do about New York? We need to worry about us...It should be more locally driven, with the opinions that are here, etc...It's what affects our lives, that's what we're interested in, not what's going on somewhere else. I'll watch national news to hear that...Concentrate on issues close to home more than anything else...Focus on your community and what's in need there, and people will get actively involved...I think sometimes the local news is trying too hard to do national stuff, and they don't really focus on local stuff...World news may affect us in the long run, but it doesn't affect the immediate community."

Finally, the paucity of issue-oriented coverage is blamed on stations spending too much time on repetition and negative news:

Less Repetition & Negativity — "It seems the majority of news is based around negative things. Yes, I like to know about it if it's happening in my area. But spending a half-hour talking about an abused child? C'mon, it's pretty depressing...Some stories repeat over and over and over. I don't feel that's necessary...It's so ridiculous. All they focus on is violent crime, and there's so much more than that going on in [our area]."