TV news sucks. Maybe it’s just the print journalist in me, but I hate everything about network news. Whether it’s the incomplete and ultimately meaningless evening news or the manipulative drivel of the hour-long primetime news magazines, I can’t stand the whole medium. I’d rather sit through a telenovela on Univision.

Take the local tripe that runs from 6—6:30 p.m. every night. How is this even considered news? The stories, which run about 90 seconds each, are vague and focused only on what the cameraman was able to catch on film, rather than the actual news. Such brevity makes it nearly impossible to give a balanced and complete view of an issue.

Worse, the news often seems more preoccupied with entertaining and tear-jerking its audience than informing them. There are several news values journalists follow in searching for and reporting stories, including significance, proximity, timeliness, human interest and unusual nature. It seems TV news focuses exclusively on the latter two at the expense of the rest.

Last week, for example, one network featured a story on a married man and woman who were both called to active military duty. Is this story interesting? Sure. Strange? Yes. Newsworthy and vitally important to the thousands of people in the greater Des Moines area? Not in the slightest.

Undoubtedly, the most maddening thing about the news is the patronizing teasers for the final story of the broadcast. Without fail, in every show the anchors allude to some goofy story, one about a new miracle drug or conclusive proof that Elvis is still alive, which they will reveal “later in the show.” Then, after forcing the viewer sit through ten or twelve incomplete news stories, two weather reports, a sports segment and 11 minutes of commercials, the much-hyped story turns out to be a 15-second blurb about a toupee in a can or an impersonator’s convention.

This “lighter side” of the news is misleading and manipulative, with no value to the broadcast or the lives of its viewers. With techniques like this employed in every show, it seems TV news’ purpose is not to inform its viewers, but to dupe them into sitting through the whole show and absorbing all the advertising.

But there is worse than the local evening news. Much worse.

Network news magazines like “Dateline,” “20/20” and “60 Minutes” are the most putrid trash on television today. Well, besides the Fox News Channel, but that’s a whole different column. Or two.

News magazines are trivial and sensationalistic melodramas, led by pompous personalities (not reporters) who care only about their face time on camera. These shows feed on the fears of the audience, delivering their viewers not to enlightenment on pertinent issues, but to unjustified fear and the advertisers paying their salaries.

One tenet of journalism is that the journalist’s place is behind the pen, camera or microphone and not in the story. The producers of these shows are apparently oblivious to this. Anchors and reporters drive these shows and dominate the reports. The reporters are the stars, going on “investigative reports” where they get to dress up in dark sunglasses and wear wires to bust the “bad guys.”

These shows don’t report the news — they create it, and that is a dangerous and unethical practice. Stories intentionally play on the viewers’ fears, and drive them into the hands of advertisers who claim to alleviate those fears. This intentional and cultivated sensationalism is heightened through an array of techniques: dramatic music, subtle scene selections, and leading questions that over-dramatize the “issue” being discussed.

I remember a piece from one such news magazine last spring, about teenage girls who had been tricked into posing naked for an Internet site.

The reporter, Jane Pauley or John Stossel or whichever pretentious, self-obsessed “journalist” it was, conducted the interviews with these 16- or 17-year-old girls on a playground. Now, unless these girls lived at a playground or went to a high school that still observed recess, it seems the show picked this location for the interview to send a subconscious message to the viewers about the story being told and the people involved.

Sensationalism and emotional ploys have absolutely no place in journalism — anything steeped in such manipulative garbage is not journalism.

TV news is awful tripe that cares more about advertising than its viewers. Give it up. Turn off your TV and pick up a newspaper. In the paper, the news is unbiased and driven by events and news. If there is manipulative garbage, it’s limited to one clearly identified page — the “opinion” page.