. . . Coming Right Up in This Exclusive Action Column! ! !

You’re reading (huff, huff) “ Action Column,” the zooming, jetting, zipping, roaring, churning, exploding, hypercharging, nose-wiggling, brain-frying, dipsey-doodling, staying-in-motion, accelerating-to-the-floor, leaving-the-competition-in-the-dust scoop about what’s what in Loony TV Toonland.

Well, not really. But you’d get that message if that was the column’s title.

Although no “Action” TV columns come to mind, “Action News” programs pepper the nation--including those on KCBS Channel 2 in Los Angeles--implying in their title that news is newsy only when driven by action.

So forget those stuffy budget hearings and school board meetings when they don’t include fist fights.

As a rule, “Action News” programs aren’t any more exciting than other newscasts. And surely not all the news they cover is action. Like titles of suspense novels, such names as “Action News” and “Eyewitness News”--the blazing neon label used by KABC Channel 7 and numerous other stations--are created for imagery and sales.

They’re part of Newsspeak .

This is the language of persuasion, the verbal and visual communication that TV news uses to shape public opinion about the world and itself.

Local newscasts are, in many ways, like a foreign movie. You need subtitles to interpret what they really mean.

For example:

“In our exclusive interview.”

Translation: No one else wanted to talk to this sucker.

“The mood in the city.”

Translation: Which we determined by talking to ourselves and reading Tarot cards.

“Some observers.”

Translation: Me .

“Only time will tell.”

Translation: Because we sure can’t .

“As expected.”

Translation: But not by us.

“This just in!”

Translation: Sometime during the last 48 hours .

“Live.”

Translation: For no valid journalistic reason that we know of.

“Team coverage.”

Translation: We haven’t got a reporter good enough to cover it alone.

“Coming right up.”

Translation: Following six other stories, the weather, sports and three commercial breaks.

“We’ve just learned.”

Translation: From reading the newspaper.

“We’ll keep following this story.”

Translation: By following our competition .

“Stay with us.”

Translation: If you’re dumb enough.

When it comes to self-promotional Newsspeak , rarely does anyone top KABC Channel 7. Listen:

“Standing by live with the Channel 7 news van. . . .”

This is the only station where a machine gets equal billing with humans. That’s because Channel 7 believes its van is one of its most recognizable components. And thus one of its most promotable ones, a symbol selling viewers the propaganda that “Eyewitness News” is everywhere.

Sort of like the Batmobile, “My Mother the Car” and the talking Pontiac Trans Am of “Knight Rider,” Channel 7’s news van has assumed a life of its own. That comes from Channel 7 displaying the van’s logo during stories and ordering anchors to prominently mention it during every intro to a live report in the field:

“Marc Brown is live with the news van in Malibu.” Cut to Brown, standing on the beach, presumably poised to run up to Pacific Coast Highway and escape in the van in the event of a flash typhoon.

If Channel 7’s van baloney is Newsspeak , so are some of the loaded words that sometimes surface, often inadvertently, in newscasts. Channel 2 anchor Bree Walker, for example, recently called an accused serial killer an “admitted lesbian,” as if lesbianism were a crime.

The category also includes statements of alleged fact in news stories without attribution. Back in Baghdad for the anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, CNN’s John Holliman reported this week that “chronic malnutrition affects 300,000 Iraqi children today” and that “tens of thousands of Iraqi children have died from malnutrition and disease.”

Those figures may be accurate, and they were backed up by pictures showing great suffering. Yet, given that Saddam Hussein has been showcasing the plight of his people to lobby for a lifting of economic and oil sanctions against Iraq, shouldn’t we know the source of those statistics?

In general, TV journalists are given much wider latitude than their print counterparts when it comes to mixing reporting and personal opinion.

For example, there was correspondent James Wooten declaring on ABC’s “World News Tonight” that New Hampshire Democrats have “heard nothing to excite them.” Granted, this is a small state, but even so Wooten would have to be some kind of news wizard to have been able to have canvassed all of its Democrats.

Moreover, here was Richard Threlkeld on “The CBS Evening News,” wrapping up a well-reported story on Democratic presidential hopeful Jerry Brown: “He’s offering new wine in a somewhat used bottle.” Whatever it meant, it was a vivid capper that evoked an unflattering image of Brown.

When it comes to Newsspeak , pictures are at least as powerful as words.

Take the clutter of news graphics, for example. This includes the inset box--usually a picture or drawing--deployed beside the anchor’s head to illustrate the story that he or she is reading or introducing. Locally--except on KTLA Channel 5, which favors a more panoramic backdrop--the boxes are small, conveying an almost subliminal message that reflects the very essence of local news: The anchors are bigger than the stories.

And . . . this just in! We give you the male anchor sitting in front of the camera with no jacket, tie loosened, shirtsleeves rolled up, a la Michael Tuck delivering his commentaries on Channel 2. The message: urgency and, yes, action.

Will Newsspeak ever soften? Unlikely. But it’s a story that “Action Column” will continue to pursue. So, as we say in the business. . . .

Stay with us.