The Network Evening Sewing Circle

Finally, someone stood up for at least a modicum of integrity in television journalism.



If you haven't seen it yet, check out the above video from earlier this week. MSNBC reporter Mika Brzezinski has a mini-breakdown of sorts when producers keep trying to make Paris Hilton's release the lead story on the Morning Joe program. Good for her. It's insane that network and cable news have been hijacked by an item that should have never left the general vicinity of Page-Six.

A similar situation was alluded to recently in a Washington Post story about Dan Rather and his remarks regarding the Katie Couric era of The CBS Evening News.

Not that I really care that much though. I can't tell you the last time I watched a network news broadcast; maybe Couric's first day. Not only is it ludicrous to think that thirty minutes is enough to discuss a given day's happenings, but to waste that condensed interval with stories that have zero to little effect on any one's daily lives is borderline criminal. Men and women are dying in a desert half-way around the world, all three branches of the government have simultaneously decided that now is a great time to be incompetent, and China is apparently going out of its way to try and poison us and our pets. I can't think of a better time for in-depth reporting on a scatter-brained socialite's "bad luck".

Perhaps it's a conspiracy. Every minute that these sewing circle talking heads spend gabbing about Paris Hilton is one less minute we get to see how inept our elected representatives are at actually representing us. Who knows, maybe the real reason VP Cheney is keeping a lid on his documents is because he doesn't want it known that he ordered Hilton's arrest in an attempt to change the topic.

Of course, we the viewers are probably as much to blame as the producers, or at least says another Post columnist, Lisa de Moraes. But regardless of whose fault is is, is it really that hard to figure out why network news ratings are tanking?