"If I ran a Madison television news department, I'd be embarrassed,'' boomed John "Sly'' Sylvester on his WTDY radio show Monday morning.

Sylvester was talking about television coverage -- or, rather, the lack of coverage -- of the anti-sweatshop sit-in in the office of University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor David Ward.

And he had a point.

Indeed, anyone looking to get a clear picture of what's wrong with American media needed to look no further than Madison's local television news last week.

Television coverage wasn't just abysmal. It was pretty much nonexistent -- in marked contrast to print and radio reports.

As students mounted a sit-in challenging University of Wisconsin policies regarding sweatshops, the whole world seemed to be watching. Protesters camped out in the lobby of Ward's office even took a call for USA Today -- "the nation's newspaper.''

USA Today's interest was hardly surprising. This is a story with national and international consequences. That's why The Capital Times, The Badger Herald, The Daily Cardinal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WORT and other local radio stations covered developments in detail and on a daily basis. (Heck, even the conservative Wisconsin State Journal paid attention to the protests -- albeit with an editorial that criticized the students for being absolutists in their fight against child labor, exploitation and other sweatshop abuses. As always, criticism from the State Journal editorial page is the best confirmation that a cause is just.)

There was plenty of news to cover: angry confrontations between students and campus police, a surprise visit by the chancellor to the protest zone, a renewal of the UW's activist tradition, and an issue that telescopes the moral and economic challenges presented by a globalized economy.

Not bad fodder for good television -- unless, of course, you're "doing news'' in Madison. Then, a story of national consequence just can't compete with Doppler radar weather. Activist Ben Manski, a recent UW grad with a rich record of local and national activism, got a taste of how bad things are when he called a local television news director to let them know about the first demonstrations on Wednesday.

"She told me that they were only interested in covering stories that would appeal to viewers and that she didn't think this qualified,'' recalled Manski. "Apart from the fact that I think she was wrong about what her viewers are interested in, I went away wondering: `Whatever happened to covering news because something significant -- something that might even be historic -- is happening?'' ''

Good question.

Sylvester says the answer is that local television has gotten lazy. In fact, laziness is less a factor than the corporate character of the television news business these days. There are a lot of good journalists working in television news in Madison and other cities around the country, but their journalistic instincts are being undermined by pressure to cover more lifestyle and weather stories and less news.

As former UW communications professor Robert McChesney details in his fine book, "Rich Media, Poor Democracy,'' when news operations have been squeezed in order to maximize profits, journalism suffers.

Only when Chancellor Ward finally ordered the arrest of the demonstrators on Sunday morning did their protests earn a lead position on the local TV news, thus leading to the sad conclusion that legitimate -- and newsworthy -- activists have to get arrested in order to get their fair share of attention from Madison's television media.

###