Even when it stumbles on it, TV can't recognize news

By Barry Garron

Both the L.A. Times and the L.A. Daily News reported that the training academy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff is being closed for at least a month while numerous problems in the program are fixed. A state oversight committee found rampant disregard for the rules, including instances of instructors providing test answers to cadets and, in other cases, allowing cadets to retake tests again and again until they finally got a passing grade.

All of this was going on at about the same time producers of the Fox Reality channel show, "The Academy," were showing how difficult and rigorous the training program is at this very academy.

It would be overreaching--but only slightly--to cite this as the perfect example of what's wrong with television today. We have finally and demonstrably reached the point where TV, instead of shining light on important problems, helps to gloss over them.

To be sure, it is not the mission of Fox Reality to do investigative reporting. But it's also not the mission of the show and its producers to be oblivious to malfeasance, to either fail to recognize it or fail to point it out to others--including the Fox News division--who are in a position to bring positive change.

But that only raises another point. Even if the crew of "The Academy" had gotten wind of the problems in the program they filmed day after day, who would they tell?

TV news in general and local news in particular has all but abandoned any pretense of real reporting. Newscasts have become a haven for quick crime and fire stories. Newscasts (the part that isn't sports and weather) are dominated by car chases, carjackings and car crashes. Stories on subjects that truly affect our communities--such as education, budgets, medical care, environment--have been banished from the air. They require research and are, of necessity, complicated. And they don't generate sensational video.

Not only must TV entertainment programs be entertaining but so, too, must TV news. The news budget has money for a helicopter and the latest and greatest special effects for weather but none for an investigative news team that wrestle with thorny issues of genuine importance.

For now, the last and only media watchdogs are newspapers. The irony here is that papers, unlike TV stations, are not specifically licensed to serve the public interest.

No matter. TV (except for PBS and a few rare exceptions) has given up the ghost of real journalism. If it wasn't for entertainment cameras at the Los Angeles Sheriff's Academy, there wouldn't be any cameras at all.