Another harbinger of spring ??

It won't happen, of course, but at least one prominent senator is speaking out about the low quality of TV "news." I object to his putting MSNBC (Rachel Maddow) in the same category as FoxNews -- but at least Jay Rockefeller is saying what I feel about the low state of journalism.

Here's what he said:

When it comes to developing content, our entertainment machine is too often in a race to the bottom. In fact, it is in a race to the bottom. Getting close. Even worse, our news media has all but surrendered to the forces of entertainment. And much of our news media is entertainment as opposed to news. Instead of a watchdog that is a check on the excesses of government and business, we have the endless barking of a 24-hour news cycle. We have journalism that is always ravenous for the next rumor, but insufficiently hungry for the facts that can nourish something called our democracy. As citizens, we are paying one heck of a price in the dumbing down of America. You're probably responsible for that.

We need new catalysts for quality news and entertainment programming. I hunger for quality news. I'm tired of the right and the left. There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, "Out. Off. End. Goodbye." It'd be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and, more importantly, in their future.

Wouldn't it be great if something could actually be done about it. But -- free speech, and all that. The only solution would be for government to beef up subsidizing NPR, but instead the Repubs in Congress are talking about de-funding NPR because of their firing of Juan Williams -- for just that: not keeping separate his opinion from his job as news analyst.

Ralph