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Like peppy anchor teams and five-part series on UFOs during sweeps week, family-sensitive news is at least partly a marketing ploy -- and a crafty one. The people who are presumably most attracted to G-rated newscasts are the parents of small children. They are primarily young adults in their 20s and 30s -- just the age group most prized by advertisers. But news directors defend their bloodless broadcasts on journalistic grounds as well. WCCO has replaced shots of dead bodies with reports that try to "put crime in context," says news director John Lansing. "The 'flashbulb effect' causes people to become disengaged and fearful of their community, of whole neighborhoods and groups of people because of the lack of context." Says Ed Bewley, chairman of Audience Research & Development, a Dallas-based consulting firm that promotes the family-sensitive approach: "As a news organization, where are you going to put your resources? Are you going to spend time and money rushing after police cars and ambulances in order to grab the first video of every crime that comes along? Or are you going to do something that will put all this in perspective?"
It's hard to argue with that, but family-sensitive news does ring some journalistic alarm bells. Cleansing newscasts of violence may be a healthy corrective to the overdose of Bobbitts and Buttafuocos in TV news. But if it means soft-pedaling or avoiding stories because they might upset viewers, the trend could be troubling. "In some cases," notes David Bartlett, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, "good journalism demands that we disturb our audience." For now, however, the family-sensitive boomlet has brought a dose of restraint to local news -- and, for viewers who already have tabloid choices aplenty, a welcome alternative.