Real journalism on TV tonight

Tonight’s (6/9) episode of Jim Lehrer’s Newshour was outstanding.  It really gave me hope that not all journalism on TV is dead.

Paul Salmon explained bank balance sheets and TARP in a way that a middle schooler could understand, with an assist from Simon Johnson and Chris Whelan.  You couldn’t ask for more professional help.

Then William Cohan (the guy that wrote the best-seller on the crisis) shed light on today’s TARP payback, with an old Treasury official giving a great counterpoint, which actually made a lot of sense (hmm, maybe changing mark-to-market is not such a farce after all).

Bonus: A great piece on the electrical transmission lines we’ll need to transport wind and solar to the cities.

If you’ve never watched the show I really urge you to. If you can get past the not-quite-so-snazzy graphics and sound effects, and normal-looking journalist (as opposed to shallow celebrity anchors) you will get more information in 60 minutes than you could from watching any cable news network all day (actually fair and balanced to boot).

You won’t miss the shouting matches, I promise.