About two years ago I was driving to my telemarketing McJob at 7 a.m. one crisp, winter morning. I wasn’t particularly distracted though I was a bit bleary as I sped off into the cold dawn to seek my fortune on the business end of a chromium black, AT&T 7410 Plus multi-line phone.

I was following about 150 yards behind a small, sports utility vehicle (truck for short) that had passed me a mile back.

As I drove into the outskirts of town, the truck suddenly flipped and rolled, landing upside down and facing backwards in the direction that it had just come. While it was happening, all I can remember thinking was, “that didn’t look very real.”

Granted, from an epistemological perspective it is valid to question the reality of any perception. Especially before your morning coffee. But as my driver’s ed teacher used to say, “when you get behind the wheel of a car on MY highway, Mister, you’d better leave that philosophy crap at home!”

So while I was pulling this guy (who dropped a smoke in his lap) out from his wrecked truck, it occurred to me that for one brief but disturbing moment, what I had seen had failed to register as a real event. It was exactly like I was watching the entire thing on television, judging the experience on the merits of its special effects and then giving it poor marks!

All of this happened pretty quickly, and I could argue that my momentary schism from reality was the product of sleepiness and caffeine deprivation. I am more inclined to see this as very clear evidence of my own shocking desensitization.

For years now, the American public has been feasting shamelessly on a slew of reality-based programs like “COPS,” “When Animals Attack,” and “The Most Bizarre Gardening Accidents Ever Caught on Video.” Not to mention a panoply of sensationalistic spectacles passing themselves off as news magazine programs; and a cornucopia of televised brouhahas masquerading as talk shows.

It seems perfectly reasonable, given the popularity of these shows combined with the questionable “reality” which they portray, and the propensity for the legitimate media to imitate their methods, that many people would be hard pressed to tell what is real and what is false.

How is anyone supposed to watch “Hard Copy” or “Current Edition” and see it as less valid than “Primetime Live” or “Dateline NBC?” The supposedly legitimate programs are engaging in the same kind of vulgar programming stunts as the syndicated pulp shows? The individual journalists even help to blur the lines.

Geraldo started out legit on “20/20,” then went solo slowly with the occasional “news” spectacle. Anyone else see the “Al Capone’s Vault” special that ended with a dirt-floored basement and the sunken hopes of a future sensationalist?

Have you seen Debra Norville lately? Last time I saw her she was unashamedly anchoring Inside Edition. Didn’t she used to be the definition of an “oxymoron,” the morning anchor?

And how about that enlightening expos‚ “Dateline NBC” did of an unstoppable internet stalker named Sommy who mysteriously terrorized a Canadian family by interrupting their phone conversations and switching off their lights? This piece was replete with frightening, incidental music and overtones of the macabre — all courtesy of tabloid TV. The message was clear: it could happen to any of us, be afraid!

No follow up was forthcoming when it turned out to be an inside job perpetrated by the family’s teenage son who was just picking up the other phone line and flipping the breaker switches in the basement. Heaven forfend they follow up. If they told the rest of the story, it would be too much like doing the news.

Listening to television journalists like Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer have a roundtable discussion after the death of Princess Diana about the differences between themselves and the tabloid press is nothing short of laughably offensive. They sit around with the likes of Barbara Walters (who just doesn’t get it) and slowly realize during the two-hour special that they are even worse because they pretend to be better.

The only mercy is that they cut these segments short because they realize that the only real difference is size, Network versus syndication. By pointing it out, they undermine their credibility. Once you start accepting that you have to entertain people with the news to keep people watching, you have already lost. Why? Because pandering to the lowest common denominator is not the job of the press, information is. It may be incompatible to inform people who are chronically ignorant.

Whatever happened to standards of excellence? Would Edward R. Murrow have devoted an hour to the possibility of the Earth being destroyed by an asteroid the opening week of “Armageddon” just to boost his ratings by playing on people’s fears? I’d like to think he wouldn’t.

The media needs to stick to their guns. If Joe Sixpack isn’t into watching real news, don’t give everyone schlock to make him watch. Amputate him from your audience like he is a gangrenous hand. If you try to accommodate his “viewing needs” then the next thing you know the whole arm is in jeopardy.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs.