How ‘Scream’ Explored the Exploitative Nature of the Nightly News

Twenty-five years ago, the first installment of the horror franchise hit theaters just as a national debate about on-screen violence reached a fever pitch

In 1993, journalist John Donvan received his first assignment as a writer and reporter on ABC’s Turning Point. He had just returned to the United States from Moscow after more than a decade abroad, covering disastrous global conflicts as a foreign correspondent. Donvan had been on the ground during the Gulf War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and paramilitary clashes in Northern Ireland. But when ABC tasked him with covering the trial of Danny Rolling—a Louisiana man charged with serial murders in Gainesville in 1990—he felt uneasy.

“I had been covering some pretty bad human tragedy. It was on a large scale, and it often had very major political consequences,” Donvan says. “This was the first time I did a story where the tragedy was all there was. And it was very, very personal.

Four years earlier, on August 20, 1990, a string of murders had rattled Gainesville, Florida, to its core. An unknown assailant pried open sliding glass doors, slipping inside to murder women and men seemingly at random.

As attacks attracted a storm of national media attention, panicked Gainesville residents raced to purchase the local supply of guns and deadbolts.

To be continued....