The more complex the issue, the more likely that understanding the context is vastly more important than seeing a picture and hearing sound bites.

Wars are especially susceptible to being distorted on camera. A dramatic event with emotional impact need not tell you what its military significance is. The viewer is able only to react emotionally, in circumstances where rationality can be the difference between life and death, not only for the combatants, but also for the societies from which they come.

Even when televised Congressional hearings are meaningless in themselves-- the real decisions having been made off camera-- their implications can be devastating. But implications cannot be televised.

Over the past two decades, judicial confirmation hearings have often become exercises in character assassination against nominees that Senators oppose for political reasons having nothing to do with the inflammatory charges that are aired on nationwide TV.

Judges who have for years supported civil rights have been depicted as racists. Other events in their careers have been twisted beyond recognition. Utterly irrelevant questions have been raised to appeal emotionally to uninformed television viewers.

The most direct harm is of course to the nominees. But the most important harm is to the public and to the country. Not only are many top-notch people lost and many innocuous second-raters appointed in their place, many other top-notch people refuse even to be nominated, rather than see the sterling reputation of a lifetime destroyed by political demagogues.

None of those lost people and their talents are televised, though they may be far more important than what is televised.