Before You Criticize, at Least Watch the Show

When I write a column criticizing Los Angeles newscasts, I can count on a pile of e-mails from readers saying I’m right, then adding: “That’s why I never watch local news.”

Love the support. But if they never watch local news, how do they know I’m right?

I can appreciate information gaps. For years I refused to eat pineapple. Never tasted it. Didn’t have to. I just knew I wouldn’t like it.

One day I did taste it. I liked it.

All that came back to me when I read of Rep. Marge Roukema (R-N.J.) being so ticked off at the “highly discriminatory” attitude of “The Sopranos” toward Italian Americans that she planned to introduce a resolution in Congress condemning the HBO series. Based on her quotes, this woman was really steamed.

You know where this is going, of course. Roukema, an Italian American, acknowledged she has never seen “The Sopranos.” She said she was responding to complaints that she had heard from constituents at shopping malls and the supermarket.

Oh.

This is really stodgy, but my feeling is that if you’re going to be wrong about television, at least be wrong about television you’ve seen.

For about a month now, I’ve been flooded with withering e-mails accusing me of being anti-Italian for regularly praising HBO’s series about a violent but conflicted New Jersey Mafia boss. What’s not to praise? For reasons I’ve stated and restated in previous columns, “The Sopranos” is about the best thing I’ve ever seen. The key word is “seen.”

I took these e-mails criticizing me at face value, assuming the senders had actually watched “The Sopranos.” But I’m wondering now if, like the congresswoman, they’re merely repeating the opinions of others.

Roukema is hardly the first lawmaker to stumble down that road. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the nation’s most vocal critics of popular entertainment, once acknowledged to me that he hadn’t watched some of the TV shows he’d public accused of being too violent or sexy for kids. I asked him why. He sounded miffed by the question. “I’m busy!” he replied.

Oh.

A large number of e-mails have arrived from England, blanket postings accusing me and other TV critics in the U.S. of savaging Anne Robinson, the British host of NBC’s “The Weakest Link,” a replica of a series that originated in London. After some gobbledygook about the crumminess of U.S. television, most end the same way: “You’re the weakest link.”

I don’t know about those other critics, but I wrote nothing negative about Robinson, which those attacking Brits would have known had they actually read me. But why should they, except that reading before ripping makes better sense?

Or knowing before talking.

As I’m writing this Friday, the 24-hour news channels are hyperventilating about Timothy McVeigh getting a stay of execution until June 11 because the FBI failed to turn over a mountain of documents to his lawyers.

“Shocking Twist,” screams a headline on the Fox News Channel. “New McVeigh evidence?” another asks.

Not that they know, but it never hurts to speculate when there’s time to fill.

Now I’m watching CNN’s “TalkBack Live,” which features debates on breaking stories, in this case the McVeigh stay that broke less than two hours before air time. Not to worry.

The studio audience has already weighed in, and at odds now, by satellite, are four radio talk-show hosts whose business is being ready with kick-butt opinions on any issue on 10 seconds’ notice. Name it, they got it. Want a conspiracy theory? Send the limo, get them in front of a camera, and they click on instantly like lightbulbs.

Today that means wondering aloud, based on absolutely no data, whether McVeigh’s death postponement is part of a secret plan by “them” to keep the confessed Oklahoma City bomber alive indefinitely. “He’ll be 70 years old in jail one day,” predicts one talk-show host with authority. How does she know? She just knows.

Oh.

A couple of hours later, Chris Matthews was asking one of his “Hardball” guests on MSNBC: “What do you think Timothy McVeigh is thinking right now?” Buckskin lawyer Gerry Spence was saying about McVeigh: “Maybe this guy was just a foot soldier.” Another attorney was wondering ominously about the FBI: “Can we believe them about [John F.] Kennedy; can we believe them about [Martin Luther] King?” While Matthews, of all people, was cautioning restraint.

If he is your voice of moderation, you know the show is out of hand.

By 4 p.m., the afternoon boys were huffed and puffed out on this, having retried McVeigh’s case, setting the table for evening talkers from CNN’s Larry King and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly to ABC’s “Nightline.” All of them would have the weekend to recharge and regenerate.

On KNBC, meanwhile, anchor Chuck Henry was calling the McVeigh stay “a big mistake, a big snafu for the FBI.” And KABC opened with it, too, before moving swiftly on to someone setting a woman on fire.

I’d like to see your e-mails on this. And remember, you don’t have to see local news yourself to dislike it.

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.