If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy of America's News Hour

In a scathing critique of local and national television news, Kerbel slyly argues that talk show hosts like Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones and Montel Williams have much more in common with ""hard"" news anchors like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings than the anchors would like to admit. Oozing compassion, facilitating the instant resolution of disputes and quickly moving on to new faces and problems, the ""talkers"" are, in Kerbel's formulation, the close counterparts of prime-time news anchors, who manipulate audiences by emphasizing sound bites and visuals over substance, decontextualizing events, kowtowing to the powerful, famous and wealthy and playing upon viewers' fears or outrage. Drawing on his experience as a former radio news reporter and PBS newswriter and as a political science professor at Villanova University, he alternates italicized excerpts from actual broadcasts with his own fast-paced, acerbic commentary, which is structured like an amorphous chunk of TV talk and news programming, complete with teasers, weather reports and ad breaks. Although Kerbel's critique would have a lot more bite if he had delved into corporate ownership and control of the news media, he uncannily re-creates and simultaneously exposes superficial reporting, titillation and trivial distraction in television news. (Feb.)