If we were once or ever naïve enough to believe that television news was keeping us well informed on political and global concerns, the last decade has been a rude wake up call. Important concepts are routinely distorted by or reduced into sound bites (after which they can be easily shrugged off, often to our detriment), biased or outright dishonest agendas are barely concealed (hello, Fox News!). Even in the increasingly rare thoughtful TV news segment, there’s limited time to get at the heart of the matter: you have to make space for those commercials.