"In TV newsrooms, if it bleeds it leads remains the watchword. A study of 559 newscasts in twenty television markets across the United States compared the crimes covered by local news to the number and types of crimes actually committed. Although crime had fallen for eight years prior to the 2004 study, in all twenty markets "audiences were told essentially the same story--that random, violent crime was a persistent and structural feature of American society," the researchers found. All the more misleading, the newscasts consistently gave the impression that murder and other serious crimes are rampant in places where they are rare."