Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi devoted a story to liberal academics and media experts needling the major networks for running entertainment shows on Tuesday night instead of constant breast-beating from Blacksburg. The networks extended their evening newscasts – ABC added five minutes, CBS added 30, NBC did an hour in prime time, and then ABC added 30 to “Nightline,” but the critics wanted a prime-time blackout for shooting news:

“Everyone can appreciate the business pressure that the networks are under, but when did they [start] ceding their responsibility to cover these stories?” said Tom Kunkel, the dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school. “It does kind of make you wonder how big a blood bath there has to be warrant their attention in prime time. How bad does it have to be to supplant ‘Dancing With the Stars’?”

Farhi’s story did not explain that anyone watching “Dancing With the Stars” last night in the Washington area (ahem, like me) would have seen updates from local affiliate WJLA at nearly every commercial break, often repeating the same information from the previous “update.” If that gets tiresome in small blocks, imagine it spread over three hours. But it seems that these experts are not fussing about a lack of information. They’re complaining that it’s the networks’ job to alert and alarm the nation and demand they pay attention to their public agenda setting.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of Washington’s nonprofit Project for Excellence in Journalism, proclaimed: “They’d rather run reruns than preempt their regular programming…It’s not a surprise, but it is unfortunate. If the networks have lost their role as arbiters of what’s significant in our culture, then they’ve been complicit in that loss.” Kunkel added it should not be left to CNN: “We’re accustomed to 24/7 cable news,” he said, “but we as Americans are still enculturated that when a story reaches a certain scale it reaches into network scale. When it’s on the networks, it says, ‘Hey, folks, we as a nation need to pay attention to this.’ When it’s in prime time, it says we as a country are stepping back and having a national conversation about it.”

Anyone who’s watched television news since Columbine knows the “national conversation” on the Tech shooting will be long and involved. Anyone wanting their fill of that chat will not go away hungry. CBS and ABC will both do special hours tonight. I would agree with these critics that often, networks find their profitable entertainment shows (even in reruns) more appealing than public service (especially at convention time). But media gurus can sometimes sound like scolds telling the public to eat their broccoli and not take any dancing breaks.