I hate TV news and TV “journalists.” Local, national, cable, network — you name it, I hate it and them. CNN, a once-proud innovator in quality news, is now even less than a joke. It’s no longer a laughable service, it’s one that should make every self-respecting democracy-loving American weep. CBS, already a shameful service, now wants to buy news from CNN? Well, sure — what the hell’s the difference at this point, anyway?

(The one exception, of course, is most of the stuff distributed via PBS. The pubcasting news/public affairs shows have their own problems, but integrity or seriousness of intent is not one of them.)

Thank God there are so many smart people in the world that are as outraged by (commercial) TV news as I am. The reaction to Wednesday night’s Clinton/Obama debate in Pennsylvania was instantaneous, nearly universally negative and — bonus — entertaining to boot.

Check out these Twitter posts (tweets) regarding the debate, from a variety of users…

• 45 minutes into the debate and I’m thinking this is exactly why network TV must die. Not one real issue – just flag pins, Wright, and Bosnia
• And should a former Clinton campaign manager be one of the two people conducting the debate? Doesn’t ABC have any real journalists?
• ABC’s debate was a bigger joke than CNN’s compassion forum. it’s good the newseum in dc is now open because real journalism is cold and dead
• hehe Charles said “fascinating debate”. What debate was he watching?
• Just wrote a letter to my local affiliate complaining about how bad the Debate was handled. I felt bad for both candidates
• Reddit-fueled debate backlash nearing 10,000 complaints on ABC website: http://ping.fm/aTKoi (wait til Digg kicks in)
• 50 minutes into the democratic debate and yet not one question of substance. No policy, all bullshit.
• terrible debate. ABC News sucks.
• Almost 10,00 comments on abcnews.com http://is.gd/6KM detesting the debate questions as tabloid and irrelevant. And they were.
• What the hell is wrong with ABC? Effing flag pins and fake scandals? Well done. You’d have been better off letting The View run the debate.
• the real question about tonight’s debate…will the press cover how bad abc news handled it???
• tried giving feedback on the debate on the abc news site but couldn’t register. site is probably overloaded. comment count is now over 9500!
• just under 4 hours since the debate and the abc news site has received almost 9400 comments, almost all negative!
• to me, the big news of the debate is how terrible the moderators were. they were trying to create news. they were debating the candidates.
• Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo says that after tonight, they need to give the debates back to the Women League of Voters?

Let’s set aside the new media topic for a moment and address journalism, ethics and trust. Public media purveyors: Your job is to be everything that ABC, CNN, CBS and others are not. Do that, on any platform, and the support will follow.