The Court of Uninformed Opinion

A couple hundred television critics just left town, and if you weren’t obligated to visit them--as TV executives and stars have done for the past three weeks--rest assured, you didn’t miss much. In general they’re a cranky, ill-mannered bunch, and--based on the questions asked--a few clearly appear to have been wading in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Still, there’s one thing you can say on behalf of TV critics: When they carp about television, it’s based on experience. They watch this stuff, to paraphrase an old slogan, so you don’t have to--oodles of it, until they can barely recall the names of their own children (Bobby? Cindy? Marcia, Marcia, Marcia?), much less distinguish one cliched sitcom or angst-ridden teen drama from another.

The same can’t be said, however, for the many politicians, advocacy groups, academics, talk-radio hosts and others who seemingly feel no need to watch TV before weighing in on its myriad problems, from violence to the shortage of minorities in new series.

In a classic instance of this, former Illinois senator Paul Simon told reporters he began crusading to curb televised violence after seeing “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” on a hotel room TV in 1985. “I’m old enough to know it’s not real, but it still bothered me that night,” Simon noted in 1990, fretting about the impact those images would have on impressionable children.

The story bothered a lot of network executives, too, since the film had never aired on broadcast television when Simon saw it, meaning the senator (who freely admitted he seldom watched TV) must have been viewing one of those uncut movie channels that some hotels provide.

Simon is hardly alone in this regard. Remember the derision heaped in June on the Chicago City Council, whose members managed to make Jerry Springer look somewhat sympathetic by grilling him over the content of his syndicated freak show, which some stated they had never seen?

Then there’s Rep. Tom A. Coburn (R-Okla.), who chastised NBC for reducing network television “to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity” because the network ran the Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List”--a statement he recanted after being called insensitive toward the Holocaust. And while Vice President Al Gore might very well have been right when he said in 1996 that “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” is “just not good for children,” can you really picture Al Gore sitting through an episode?

Other self-appointed critics frequently let slip that they haven’t seen the programs they discuss and condemn.

Take Peter Navarro, an associate professor of economics and public policy at UC Irvine. He recently wrote a thoughtful article proposing a “violence tax” on the media as a means of averting direct censorship. Yet as a case study, Navarro chose “NYPD Blue,” calculating what the tax would be if an episode “airs two homicides, a rape and an assault.”

Now, as any “NYPD Blue” viewer can tell you, there has never been a rape shown on that program in six years and more than 130 episodes. Even graphic assaults or homicides are rare, since--as on NBC’s “Law & Order”--the cops usually arrive on the scene long after the actual mayhem. Granted, the professor was making a point, but why not cite a show where such on-camera violence occurs? Just what we need--another tax with built-in loopholes.

Advocacy groups, meanwhile, regularly jump to conclusions based on minimal evidence. Several months ago, for example, a community activist called to notify The Times he intended to mount a protest against Fox’s animated comedy “The PJs,” at the same time admitting he hadn’t seen the show.

A more egregious mix of fact and fiction plagued UPN’s short-lived comedy “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” whose most serious offense, despite accusations the show made light of slavery, was being persistently unfunny. Certain scenes decried by the Brotherhood Crusade’s Danny Bakewell never aired, and some were misrepresented. While what offends someone is obviously personal, at least one community leader is said to have conceded to UPN executives after finally seeing the program that it didn’t merit all the fuss.

As for the furor surrounding the glaring lack of minorities in new prime-time shows, advocacy groups initially relied on press accounts highlighting this phenomenon after the networks presented their series prototypes to advertisers in May. During the ensuing debate, some critics have over-simplified this deficiency, referring to a complete absence of minority characters, which isn’t true.

Even before the networks started their almost comical scramble to add minorities to new programs, there were significant minority roles in ABC’s “Snoops,” CBS’ “Now and Again,” Fox’s “The Badland,” and NBC’s “Third Watch” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” If this in no way absolves programmers and producers of shame, it does make throwing around words like “none” and “never” inaccurate.

While that might sound like hair-splitting, imprecise and over-heated rhetoric often helps undermine valid criticism. Talking about violence or diversity in the absolute terms some elected officials and activists use as they seek to bolster a transparent political agenda allows TV executives to discount their complaints (privately, if not publicly) as the rantings of cranks and yahoos--people who don’t watch the programs they denounce.

Indeed, the least-informed pronouncements may ultimately do a disservice to the groups such politicians and lobbyists purport to represent--from those genuinely concerned about the impact of TV violence on children to the minority actors, writers and crews struggling to make a living. These are the voices that should be heard, and they require no hyperbole and half-truths to expose television’s shortcomings.

No one would say screening every network pilot or poring over hours of wrestling and “Jerry Springer” is a prerequisite to criticize television. That would be cruel punishment, even for a politician; still, credibility rightly suffers when people leap into battle before bothering to at least familiarize themselves with the source of their outrage.

So yes, TV critics are an unruly lot, but give them credit for watching TV before spouting off about it. They watch more, in fact, than is probably healthy; but that, without question, is television’s fault.

Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.