The sorry state of television news

I rewatched "Good Night and Good Luck" the other night and after it was over I thought a lot about the scene that frames the film. It depicts David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow and he's delivering a speech to broadcast executives warning them that their medium, television, is heading in the wrong direction. Instead of being a tool to illuminate the mind, it's becoming one to the dull the senses. It is, he claims, far more interested in comforting viewers than in bringing them out of a state of complacency.

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, if Edward R. Murrow were alive today, he'd be turning over in his grave. The state of television and its news divisions is worse than Murrow could have imagined it. Of course, this is not startling information and the only reason I bring it up now is because television news did have a wonderful opportunity for a rebirth recently and completely blew it.

I am referring to the just-concluded writers strike. When television was bemoaning the fact that they could not put on new episodes of their routine nightly pablum, why didn't any of the news divisions come up with programming that explored the whys and hows of what's going on in the world today? This could have been the perfect time to take a closer look at the war in Iraq, the mortgage crisis, a close examination of those candidates who want us to elect them as the next president. Instead, we got more "reality" shows which, of course, have nothing to do with reality.
The answers to my questions are probably the obvious ones: No one is interested in this type of programming, advertisers wouldn't pay for them, etc. But I don't think anyone even tried. No one raised a voice to say "let's take a chance, let's assume television viewing adults are smarter than we give them credit for."

Jim Schultze, a reporter I respect and admire even if I don't always agree with him, has started a blog the subject of which is the death of daily newspapers. Actually, I'm surprised they still exist. I'm an old-school kind of guy and still subscribe to the Dallas Morning News. My son who lives with me while getting ready for medical school never looks at it. His generation has no interest in newspapers whatsoever. So if the dailies aren't killed by rising production costs, they will die by attrition.

Television news, on the other hand, is commiting suicide by starving itself to death.