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Weekly UpdatesAcademics and practitioners are vocal in expressing their concerns about the role of journalism in contemporary society. Because television is a primary source of information, the bulk of this criticism is leveled against broadcast news. Specifically, critics express concern about the proliferation of tabloid news practices. Critics point out that local television news stations are adopting tabloid news magazine production techniques for newscasts.(1) They call it a sensational news practice, or "infotainment," where production style overpowers substantive information (Bernstein, 1992; Briller, 1993; Fiske, 1992; Kurtz, 1993; Reibstein, 1994; Rosenberg, 1989; Walters, 1988; Weiss, 1989; Zoglin, 1993). Indeed, with the development and adoption of new technology in the television production field, a new approach to packaging television news has evolved. Video cameras have become more portable, allowing videographers to provide an eyewitness account of news events. Moreover, digital video editing enables flamboyant visual effects that traditionally have not been associated with broadcast journalism.
A recent content analysis on the prevalence of production techniques in a tabloid ("Hard Copy") and a standard ("60 Minutes") news magazine program produced support for the claim that tabloid news packaging makes lavish application of camera and editing techniques (Grabe, Zhou, & Barnett, 1998). Results indicate that part of what is perceived as sensational news packaging is the way in which these production techniques, or structural features, are used. The most prominent formal differences between "Hard Copy" and "60 Minutes" involved five production techniques: music, sound effects, slow motion, the use of flash frames as transitions between shots, and the obtrusiveness of the reporter's voice tone.(2)
These findings suggest that tabloid television news is produced using a formal structure that differs significantly from standard broadcast news. It is not clear whether the flamboyant format of tabloid news influences information processing and evaluative responses. To investigate this question, different packaging styles were tested on the emotional and physiological arousal of viewers and the encoding and retention of information as suggested by the limited capacity model of information processing. Moreover, viewer perceptions of the newsworthiness and trustworthiness of news messages were examined.
Arousing Content, Viewer Arousal, and Memory
The level of emotional and psychological arousal associated with television news viewing is connected to the notion of sensationalism. In fact, sensationalism, believed to be a key ingredient of tabloid reporting, is often defined by its potential to be emotionally arousing. Sensationalism is said to stimulate "unwholesome emotional responses" (Mott, 1962, p. 442); shock and thrill our moral and aesthetic sensibilities (Tannenbaum & Lynch, 1960); emphasize "emotion for emotion's sake" (Emery & Emery, 1978); and arouse emotion and empathy (Graber, 1994). According to Daniels et al. (in Tannenbaum & Lynch, 1960, p. 382) sensational news stories are "underdistanced." That is, they violate a comfortable psychological distance between the audience and their perceptions of events in the physical world. Thus, sensational stories are charged with provoking more sensory and emotional reactions than what is deemed proper and socially acceptable.
Tabloid news programs may increase the arousal of viewers in at least two ways. First, arousal may be influenced by story topic or content: violence, disaster, and sex have been shown to elicit arousal in most viewers whereas topics such as meetings and nature have been shown to elicit comparatively less arousal. Researchers who used still slides (Lang, Bradley, Greenwald, & Hamm, 1993) and television messages (Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, 1999; Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995) have manipulated arousal as an attribute of content in experimental stimuli with predictable and significant effects on viewer arousal.
The second way television producers can increase viewer arousal is through the use of structural features. Research shows that the use of specific formal features, such as editing pace (Yoon, Bolls, Lang, & Potter, 1997; Gunter, 1987; Hitchon, Thorson, & Duckler, 1994), point-of-view camera movement (Lombard, Reich, Grabe, Campanella, & Ditton, 2000), shot length (Ekman, 1983; Galan, 1986; Salomon, 1972), and music (Seidman, 1981) can increase self-reports of emotional arousal. This suggests that viewers may find stories produced using structural features associated with tabloid news packaging more arousing than stories which do not use these techniques. This leads to the first hypothesis:
[H.sub.1]: Viewers will rate tabloid versions of news stories to be more arousing than standard versions.
In addition to heightening feelings of arousal, arousing content and tabloid production features should also increase viewers' physiological arousal. To allow investigation of the effects of viewer arousal elicited by structural features independent of the story topic or content arousal, we included emotional arousal associated with content in the design and used it as a control measure to assess physiological arousal, attention, and memory. The limited capacity model of information processing suggests that an increase in production features can elicit greater physiological arousal in viewers (Lang, Bolls, Potter, & Kawahara, 1999). Lang et al. (1999) measured skin conductance as a direct measure of activation in the sympathetic nervous system and found that the more structural features in a message the greater the number of non-specific skin conductance responses in viewers. Hence, it should follow that:
[H.sub.2]: Viewers will exhibit more skin conductance responses during stories rated as more arousing and during tabloid versions of the stories than during less arousing stories and standard versions of the stories.
Both arousing content and viewer arousal (once elicited) play important roles in information processing (Zillmann, 1982). Arousing content and viewer arousal affect attention (Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Graber, 1990; Lang et al., 1999; Lang, Newhagen, & Reeves, 1997; Newhagen & Reeves, 1992; Reeves, Thorson, & Schleuder, 1986). In the psychophysiological literature it has been ascertained that a decrease in heart rate (HR) is indicative of an increase in attention to a stimulus (Lacey, Kagan, Lacey, & Moss, 1963). This decrease in HR associated with an increase in attention has been demonstrated during television viewing when the television messages were arousing (Lang, 1990; Thorson & Lang, 1993). For example, Lang, Newhagen, & Reeves (1998) found that viewers had slower heart rates while viewing news stories containing graphic negative video than they did while viewing the same news stories without the graphic negative images. Lang et al. (1999) also found that viewers watching arousing messages had slower heart rates than viewers watching calm messages. Similarly, viewers pay more attention to messages with complex or frequent structural features than to messages with fewer or less complex structural features (Lang, 1995). Arousing stories and the tabloid versions of stories should elicit more attention then less arousing stories and standard versions. Thus, heart rate should be slower during arousing as well as tabloid stories.
[H.sub.3]: Heart rate will be slower during arousing stories and tabloid versions than during less arousing stories and standard versions.
In addition to increased sympathetic arousal and attention, arousal has been shown to improve memory for television messages (Bradley, 1992, 1994; Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995), except when fast paced editing is used with arousing video content (Lang et al., 1999). The combination of arousing content with fast paced editing overloads the information processing capacity and leads to poor memory. Editing pace was not manipulated in the study, reported here.
[H.sub.4]: Arousing stories and tabloid versions of news stories will be remembered better than less arousing stories and standard versions.
Evaluations of News
This study also investigated whether tabloid production features influence viewer judgments about the newsworthiness or trustworthiness of news stories. Providing the citizens of a democratic society with accurate and unbiased information is an enduring journalistic value. That may explain why critics of journalism have, since the development of the Penny Press, focused on the information function of journalism to argue publicly for the distinction between "proper" reporting and sensational tabloid attempts to inform the public. A number of studies (Adams, 1978; Davie & Lee, 1995; Dominick, Wurtzel, & Lometti, 1975; Harmon, 1989; Hofstetter & Dozier, 1986; Ryu, 1982; Scott and Gobetz, 1992; Slattery, 1994; Wulfemeyer, 1982) have attempted to distinguish between tabloid and standard news content, but have ignored--for the most part--the potential formal differences between these two news genres. The verdict is that proper journalism serves as society's unbiased watchdog by focusing primarily on substantive and timely political and economic issues while tabloid journalists openly favor coverage of scandal, crime, human tragedy, and other disruptions of everyday life. Consequently, the content of tabloid news programs has been dismissed as trivial "infotainment," while standard news practices are commended for their focus on important information.(3)
Although critics remain skeptical and concerned about the news audiences' ability to distinguish between "proper" and sensational journalism (Bernstein, 1992; Briller, 1993; Kurtz, 1994; Salerno, 1995), there is some evidence that the public is able to make this distinction. A study conducted by Austin and Dong (1994) reveals that readers associate proper journalistic attributes (e.g., accuracy and objectivity) with a newspaper's reputation. Readers evaluated stories that were embedded in either a reputable (New York Times), disreputable (Star), or a fictitious newspaper. Stories that were featured with the tabloid newspaper nameplate were rated as more biased and less accurate than those that appeared with the fictitious or reputable paper nameplates. Similarly, Tannenbaum and Lynch (1960) found that newspaper readers associated inaccuracy, irresponsibility, "foolishness," and unacceptable information with sensational tabloid reporting.
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