BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

For millions of us the evening news is a ritual. There’s a lot of star power from which to choose. There’s muscle man Scott Pelley on CBS, ABC’s drama queen Diane Sawyer, and breathless Brian Williams on NBC. They all dish up a tossed salad of news, usually with the tastiest and most attractive morsels atop the more nutritious ingredients buried beneath.

Take for example the NBC Nightly News on May 31st.  According to the Peacock network the most important story that day was the hung jury in the John Edwards case. The Edwards trial wasn’t just the lead story. It was also the second story and the third story, taking up about seven minutes of the 28-minute news cast, and I use the term ‘news’ loosely.

We got long clips of Edwards talking about God. Then a sleepy Matt Lauer, sitting in for Brian, went to Lisa Myers who droned on about Edwards and his family. On came legal correspondent Savannah Guthrie with even more analysis. It was mostly favorable to Edwards, who has long enjoyed a place on the altar of media adoration.

The next most important news to occur that day, according to NBC, was the declaration of war by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on oversized sodas. That story was followed by more analysis from NBC doctor in residence, Nancy Snyderman, who was clearly an enlistee in Bloomberg’s new army.

The evening news shows on the 31st of May were pretty normal fare. There was real news, but not much; more so from iron man Pelley. His ascendancy to the anchor chair seems to have brought with it a more serious slant on news, than was the case with predecessor Katie Couric.

The reality is, though, that the American people are being fed salacious, titillating gossip, and useless garbage for which, admittedly, they/we have a certain appetite. It is part of our natural human behavior.

Regardless of fault, we are being fed way too much junk food and way too little nutrition. It is reminiscent of the consumer con played on us back in the ‘70s by the auto industry. We were marketed and sold cars that looked slick and sexy, had muscle-man engines and mesmerizing  veneers, but they were all planned for early obsolescence. The public bought them for a while, but soon woke up to the realities of safety, durability and cost of operation. Eventually the public demanded better of their automakers, and got it.

Now the news media are behaving like the auto barons once did. There is one very critical difference. Cars are a product important in our lives but not as important as quality information, and while the car companies are profit-making, profit motivated businesses, just like the news media, automakers don’t have the unique and distinct honor of being protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution, an honor that comes with extraordinary responsibilities.

The problem isn’t an isolated one and it wasn’t unique to May 31. After Edwards got off the hook that week, NBC executives turned the cameras on Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State coach eventually found guilty of sexually abusing young kids. The pitiful Sandusky made the nightly news six times after the 31st. On June 22nd Lester Holt, sitting in for breathless Brian, introduced the Sandusky story second in the lineup, right behind a Catholic monsignor in Philadelphia found guilty of abetting child sex abuse. What was so earth shaking about the Sandusky trial on that day, when Egypt was erupting in protests, Syria shot down a Turkish jet fighter and the global economy was crumbling before our eyes? The big story, and we had to go to Penn State for a live shot to get it, was that nothing happened. That’s right. Crack investigative reporter Michael Isakoff, who worked his way up through the professional ranks from a humble stringer on Capitol Hill, had to stand in front of a camera and fabricate news from nothing.

That same night the drama queen aired an embarrassingly shameless promotion of the news magazine 20/20, airing as one of her lead stories an upcoming 20/20 interview by Chris Cuomo with Rielle Hunter, the love interest of John Edwards. Heeee’s baaaack!

The reason Rielle is more important in our lives than one of the worst economies since the depression, one of the most challenging fiscal crises in government in 25 years, the teetering stock market, the evaporation of millions of retirement plans, more foreclosures, chronic unemployment and a reduction in household income? She wrote a book.

This 21st century version of ‘news” is nothing new. Broadcast journalism has been on the decline for a decade or more. The networks are a poor shell of what they once were and the “over-the-air” networks are heads and shoulders above other news outlets. Politico’s John Van de Hei said it well at a recent luncheon. The greats such as Walter Cronkite could have been accused of bias now and then, but at least their newscasts were based in real news.

Cable news shows in this new age are cheap entertainment mediums. The celebrity anchors are infotainers at best. And the online stuff? It is defined by the immortal words of Arianna Huffington who said the Huffington Post doesn’t concern itself with accuracy, just getting the story online before anyone else does. “The news” she said, “will self-correct.”

This would all be a big long practical joke perpetrated on the public, if the public were not in such serious, almost desperate need for real news and information. They have enormous reservoirs of information to choose from. What they need, however, is the kind they can translate into knowledge that they can use to make good decisions about how they are governed, and how they live their lives.

We have tolerated the degeneration of the media for years. We have come to accept reality television that isn’t real, circus clowns who are supposed to be serious, journalists striving to be entertainers and entertainers masquerading as journalists. We have tolerated news shows that feature no news just the noise of staged antagonists yelling at each other while anchors sit back and let it happen like the refs in the old hockey games. We have tolerated the emasculation and fictionalization of facts, character assassinations and sensationalism on steroids. We have tolerated insults to our intelligence and the manipulation of our emotions and sensibilities.

We have allowed it to happen. We cannot any longer. We should get mad as hell and not take it any more. The media are making us laugh. They are making us mad. They are entertaining us and appealing to our basest emotions and instincts. But in the end they are taking our money and leaving us empty handed and empty minded.

It is a media problem, but as Van de Hei also concluded, it is a consumer problem, too. We have no one to blame, except maybe ourselves and we surely have no one to look to for relief except ourselves.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.