It’s a comment heard for years at meetings of the Greater Memphis Chamber, from fellows at New Memphis, and by class members at Leadership Memphis: “Reporting crime all the time is not a responsible or accurate reflection of life in our city.”
This time, however, criticism of the relentless nightly crime coverage comes from somebody who can do something about it: Richard Ransom, news anchor and managing editor at WATN TV’s Local 24 News.
Ransom’s move to Channel 24 from working as a news anchor at WREG-TV did more than give him a break from that station’s nightly “if it bleeds, it leads” rundown. It gave him the opportunity to craft an entirely different kind of newscast for Memphis, one that “wants to inform you, not scare you,” he says.
In its way, the nightly crime coverage is the television equivalent of clickbait. “The bottom line is that ‘crime all the time’ coverage, as I like to call it, is lazy,” says Ransom, an Emmy Award-winning writer. “It’s low-hanging fruit. It also doesn’t reflect in a balanced way the city I know. It glorifies violence and can fuel racial stereotypes.”
That doesn’t mean that Channel 24 won’t top the news with a crime story, as it did with a murder in Harbor Town in early November. “I’m not saying that you just start doing a bunch of good news stories,” he says. “I am saying there’s so much real news to report other than crime-scene tape and flashing blue lights.”
It is common for a television reporter to arrive on the scene of a shooting shortly before the 10 o’clock news and can report little except that it has just taken place. Its main value to news directors is that it took place at just the right time to satisfy the need for a lead story about violent crime.
“My colleagues — most of whom I consider friends and respect a great deal — will admit privately that it’s a bunch of bull, but in their defense, they’re just doing what they’re being told to do,” Ransom said. “They go to a live shooting with little to no information, only to learn an hour later some guy was shot in the big toe. By then the story has disappeared into the news vacuum.”
As a result, the shootings are never mentioned again. There is no follow-up and most never warrant a line in the city’s newspapers. “We all know crime is a real problem here and has to be covered, but Local 24 News will show up at a crime scene and have the courage to wait for the details to flush out before putting it on the air,” says Ransom.
His experiment in newscasts that aren’t “all crime all the time” is so far unduplicated by any other local television station, and with Sinclair Broadcasting set to acquire WREG-TV and possibly require the station to adhere to an alt-right point of view, media observers predict that Channel 3 — which became the city’s highest-rated local newscast while Ransom was anchor there — will double down on its crime coverage.
And yet Ransom is confident that the public wants a change. “For years, it’s all I would hear from viewers I would meet. They’d say: ‘I used to watch the news, but it’s not relevant to me anymore. All you do is crime, crime, crime.’ At some point, the bar was lowered on crime coverage, so everybody races to crime scenes and labels it as ‘breaking news’ and don’t worry about whether it’s a legitimate story until later.”
Ransom said it is too early to gauge the public’s reaction, but points out that “slow and steady” wins the race. “We are under no illusions. You don’t change decades of viewing habits overnight. We think there’s a real appetite for a refreshing approach. If we see viewers are responding, that will be success. So far, the feedback we’re getting is very positive. Ultimately, it’s up to the folks watching at home.”
Journalism in all its forms is facing a difficult time. Daily newspapers are in a downward spiral, more people get their news online, and television news is scaling back. Because of all this turmoil, Ransom feels that growing at all in a declining business environment would be a huge victory.
There are encouraging signs that Richard Ransom’s approach may be working. Local 24’s 10 p.m. news ratings are already up 35 percent, an early indicator that he just may be on to something.
