In fairness, there's more to American television news than "sensationalistic, entertainment-oriented pap." On a class act like CNN it can occasionally rise to the level of officially-vetted propaganda:
Did the press play the Pentagon's game? Consider the following comment by CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, on the network's program "Reliable Sources": "I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important." So CNN hired commentators approved in advance by "important people" at the agency on which they would be commenting. That makes them little better than publicists for the Pentagon or for factions within the military. They certainly didn't have the independent perspective we expect of mainstream journalism.
[link|http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/04/ED214473.DTL|http://www.sfgate.co...5/04/ED214473.DTL]

This kind of complicity would be troubling in any other country, but since we here in the States have the world's freest press (as we are daily told from our earliest school years), it's obviously nothing to worry about.

cordially,