Dramas best news on issues

IT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY, but if you want to understand some of the key issues facing the country today, do not waste your time watching nonfiction television. TV news shows, documentaries, newsmagazine programs, and morning talk fests are too busy going on and on about crime, celebrities, lifestyles, restaurants, movies, weather, sports, music, and why everyone hates the news media. For real insight into some of the key issues facing society, you are better off watching such television dramas as "Boston Legal," the "Law & Order" franchise, "Grey's Anatomy," "ER," and even sci-fi programs like "Invasion."

David Kelly's "Boston Legal," for example, has taken on such topics as abortion, euthanasia, illegal government eavesdropping, health care insurance, despoiling the environment, slumlords, the Sudanese holocaust, creationism and Darwin in the public schools, corrupt practices of the pharmaceutical industry, censorship of students, sexual and religious harassment in the workplace, lies told by Army recruitment officers to get teenagers to enlist, and the growing lack of privacy.

You probably can get an even better handle on how terrorism works by watching "24" than from nonfiction television. TV journalists and their news managers seem to have forgotten about the health care crisis, apparently considering it old news. However, medical and law dramas give an in-depth view of what is going on when it comes to health care for the working poor. While TV news scares the public regularly with news bulletins screaming about a new health threat (Avian flu), natural disasters (wildfires and hurricanes), or terrorism (an orange or red alert), dramatic programs take on fundamental issues affecting our lives with better research, exposition, and sharp dialogue.

It seems the only writers listening to what is ailing the U.S. and the rest of the world are those creating TV's successful dramatic shows. TV journalists seem to be too busy trailing Brad and Jen and Angelina and Lindsay and Brittney or watching the police chase some anonymous drunk to worry about the stories that truly affect our present and future lives. The news shows do not even serve as an adequate headline service anymore. The nightly newsmagazines only seem interested in offering in-depth coverage of an obscure trial or murder mystery--or they show an overwhelming concern that everyone in America is becoming either too fat or too thin.

The news media--first print, then broadcast--seems to fall in love with some lifestyle issue every other month from high cholesterol (everyone needs more drugs) to plastic surgery (everyone needs less procedures) and newly discovered-by-the-media epidemics such as filth in hotels and restaurants, attention deficit disorder, obesity, erectile dysfunction and, everybody's favorite topic when ratings go down, pornography and kids (yet another epidemic, this one on the Internet).

Prime-time nonfiction television creates its own world of hysteria and concern, but provides little accurate information about the issues that affect us all. It isn't that obesity doesn't hurt people or that erectile dysfunction isn't serious for those with the problem, it's just that we need to look at universal situations that seriously affect the very quality of who and what we are. Our health care system for the uninsured is, according to one Newsweek columnist, about as good as those in Third World countries. The Administration has gone into a war to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and, in the process, created more terrorists; killed and maimed thousands of men, women, and children; and mortgaged every Americans' future. Our military has engaged in torture while denying basic legal rights to hundreds of Americans, all the while ignoring judicial decisions and even a United Nations resolution, All of these stories--we're talking the real, full story--are being ignored by the news media. This is a disgrace.

There are, of course, exceptions to every generality. Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio continue to do a good job informing the public. So do, at times, the major newspapers, magazines and, occasionally, even the network news shows. Too often, though, the news media is distracted by trivia and fluff. On the busy network news schedule, where every minute is precious, news programs must be filled with information on what is essential to people's health and welfare. To do less is to forfeit the special privileges the news media enjoy.

In light of the vacuum created by the press when it comes to covering the key issues of the day, we should be thankful that the creators of dramatic television have picked up the slack by not only entertaining us, but informing us with well-researched and -written episodic TV. Moreover, the programs that do this seem to be among the most popular shows now being broadcast.

However, that does not excuse the news media's failure to do their job. Looking over this state of affairs, legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow would be shaking his head in disgust before giving his signature "good night, and good luck" to those of us still tuned to our television sets. If he wanted to learn about the real problems lacing the country, he would have to watch "Boston Legal" or "Law & Order," not the "CBS Nightly News" or "48 Hours."