YOUTH AND VIOLENCE ON LOCAL TELEVISION-NEWS IN CALIFORNIA

Objectives. This study explores how local television news structures t he public and policy debate on youth violence, Methods. A content anal ysis was performed on 214 hours of local television news from Californ ia. Each of the 1791 stories concerning youth, violence, or both was c oded and analyzed for whether it included a public health perspective. Results. There were five key findings. First, violence dominated loca l television news coverage. Second, the specifics of particular crimes dominated coverage of violence. Third, over half of the stories on yo uth involved violence, while more than two thirds of the violence stor ies concerned youth. Fourth, episodic coverage of violence was more th an five times more frequent than thematic coverage, which included lin ks to broader social factors. Finally, only one story had an explicit public health frame. Conclusions. Local television news provides extre mely limited coverage of contributing etiological factors in stories o n violence. If our nation's most popular source of news continues to r eport on violence primarily through crime stories isolated from their social context, the chance for widespread support for public health so lutions to violence will be diminished.