A few years ago, I used to lament that my TV news choices in Japan were basically limited to NHK, BBC, and CNN. I used to think I was missing something by having to rely on CNN for American political commentary (don’t get me started on CNN – Soledad deserves her own separate post, and, when I feel zen enough to tackle it, I will do one).

However, holidays in Toronto or the U.S. over the past few years have made me realise that the whole TV news industry has been diluted almost to insignificance – it all seems to consist of reporting that lacks purpose, friendly interviews that never contain any hard-hitting questions, and a real lack of critique.

As a result, I haven’t really felt I’ve been missing much in terms of North American news coverage; and, of course, if I really want to see some hard-hitting questions, there’s always BBC’s Hard Talk if you really want to see someone getting grilled in the hot seat for 30 solid minutes – it’s sometimes outstanding, but, obviously, does not contain so much American political content.

Recently, however, I’ve started watching Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” from his nightly MSNBC show Countdown – I can only watch it on the web (but oddly not directly from the MSNBC website as it doesn’t seem to work on either Safari or Firefox browsers), so I only watch it occasionally.

What I like about his nightly “Special Comment” is that it’s a real opinion piece – he never shies away from directly stating his opinion, and he delivers his opinions in a powerful and passionate way. The passion comes from the fact that he obviously really believes what he is saying (unlike watching Miles and Soledad put on their sad and serious faces after watching any generic piece of horrible footage and then murmuring their fake commiseration).

Watching Keith Olbermann has made me miss the element of TV news that has basically been missing since the whole 24-hour cable news industry was spawned. Of course, growing up in Canada, I used to watch Barbara Frum almost every night – you could always count on her for some real questions and real analysis regardless of whether or not you agreed with her. The big three U.S. networks also had their nightly news commentary, and, prior to the era of CNN, there just seemed to be more substance and more gravitas in the delivery of the news. Now, even on network news, you have Katie Couric fawning over Bush and telling him repeatedly just how much she appreciates him deigning to appear on her show.

As an antidote to the cretins on Fox, watch this – a powerful 8 minute piece on the implications of Bush signing Congressional bill S.3930 (the Military Commissions Act of 2006) into effect.