Reply to Thread

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GC7" data-source="post: 4146763" data-attributes="member: 2455">"if it bleeds, it leads"The phrase has an interesting, and OLD, history:[URL unfurl="true"]https://ic4ml.org/blogs/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-crime-reporting/[/URL]In news broadcasting, there is the saying, <a href="https://pepperdine-graphic.com/opinion-if-it-bleeds-it-leads-the-modern-implications-of-an-outdated-phrase/" target="_blank">“if it bleeds it leads</a>.<a href="https://pepperdine-graphic.com/opinion-if-it-bleeds-it-leads-the-modern-implications-of-an-outdated-phrase/" target="_blank">”</a> The phrase dates back to the end of the 1890s. William Randolph Hearst coined the phrase after seeing that the stories involving horrific incidents were the ones that caught the public’s attention. As it turns out these stories are easy to produce. <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/lights-camera-crime-20220328.html" target="_blank">The Philadelphia Inquirer’s</a> reporter Layla A.  Jones commented on crime reporting in an article titled, “Lights. Camera. Crime.” “Crime was cheap to cover. It was easy to cover,” says Jones. “[The assignment desk] said to the  cameraman ‘You shoot the scene, you shoot the blood, you shoot the victims, whatever they got,  and you can do it in 20 seconds.”</blockquote>