Seldom does Dateline NBC cover politics. Did anyone watch its Inside Congress special?

[alp227]

I think that Dateline NBC might've been a legitimate newsmagazine show in the '90s, but most Dateline stories in this age cover true crime and human interest stories not current events. Maybe I might've missed a recent Dateline that covered American culture or social sciences; I remember watching one back in 2006 about teenage use of MySpace. So it was a rarity to see Dateline cover Congress' debt ceiling debate. Did anyone watch it? I recorded it because I was out tonight, and I will watch it on Monday, I think that it should be an interesting inside look at the American political process.

This gets me thinking: long-form investigative/in-depth journalism can't be found on American primetime TV beyond CBS's 60 Minutes or PBS's Frontline and Need to Know. Edward R. Murrow even narrated a primetime documentary about migrant workers back in 1960, "Harvest of Shame" (now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJTVF_dya7E%7C">uploaded in its entirety by CBS on YouTube). ABC's 20/20 and NBC's Dateline appear more of infotainment...and you can't forget about the right-wing/libertarian propaganda peddled by John Stossel when he was working at 20/20. And CBS's true crime show 48 Hours Mystery originated as an in-depth journalism program; in 1986 its first episode explored the crack crisis (hence the title 48 Hours on Crack Street). It looks like ever since the Fairness Doctrine ended and the Telecommunications Act enabled the increasing corporate takeover of the media the news divisions of the commercial networks decided to go the for-profit route (traditionally they'd been money-losing operations) and that's why it's hard to confuse Dateline or 20/20 with much of the other reality TV/entertainment programming on primetime.