We hate the anonymous caller who ratted him out and the cops were meanies to arrest him just because he had five grams of cocaine hidden in the bottom of a Kleenex box. Ask any woman. The other long-running television drama came back to mind when NBC refused to break in with George W's speech when he won certification of his votes in Florida. Political bias, we're told, was not behind the NBC decision. The explanation, which has the ring of terrible truth, was that the decision was based on marketing and entertainment values.
Television has priorities, after all.
Television can be a wonderful tool in a democracy, making news accessible to large numbers of people. But it runs the danger of trivializing democracy, too. George W. was not acting a part in a fictional drama. Television is hazardous for our political health because it has the extraordinary power to blur the ability to make important moral distinctions. Television gives equal weight to unequal facts.