For a long time, Fox News Channel has bragged about being a “fair and balanced” news network… For a long time, Fox News Channel has bragged about being a “fair and balanced” news network that “America trusts.” Bill O’Reilly’s daily opinion show is the program that continues to dominate cable news. The second highest-rated cable TV show is “Hannity and Colmes,” which immediately follows “The O’Reilly Factor.”

A network with such a respected image among Americans would be expected to report the news in a straightforward manner, right? A network that pummels the competition every day would probably have achieved that status because of ethical, fair reporting, right?

Apparently not.A story from the Associated Press discussed a study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that revealed the amount of time each major cable news networks spent covering the war in Iraq. For the first three months of the year, Fox spent half as much time covering the war as MSNBC. CNN also spent considerably more time on war coverage than Fox.

In fact, Fox News spent only 6 percent of daytime hours covering the war. CNN spent 20 percent and MSNBC spent 18 percent.

So, what news was so much more important than our questionable war in Iraq? On what did Fox News, the network America trusts, spend that time reporting? Well, the PEJ report also showed that Fox gave Anna Nicole Smith’s death “significantly more air time” than the other news networks earlier this year.

Perhaps Fox will consider changing its slogan from “fair and balanced” to “no news is good news.”

The disturbing thing about this report is not the fact that Fox News spends little time covering the most important issue of the day – anyone could have figured that out.

No, the most frightening thing about this report is what it shows about American intellect and our desire to think. If most cable news viewers are watching Fox and Fox is spending all of its time on Anna Nicole’s death, Paris Hilton’s jail sentence or Lindsay Lohan’s drunk-driving arrests, what does that say about us?

This goes further than the empty, innocuous reports from Rupert Murdoch’s puppets. Since Fox – and to be fair, the other cable networks to a degree – has blurred the line between information and entertainment, it seems that this problem must bleed into where we find our entertainment as well.

Recently I was at Blockbuster. When I was looking at the new releases, which generally merit an entire wall of DVDs, two sections in particular caught my eye.

The first contained “The Queen,” a film whose lead actress was considered the best of the entire year and garnered it a best actress Academy Award and a nomination for best picture.

The second section contained “Norbit,” a film that wasn’t nominated for anything, and starred Eddie Murphy wearing a fat suit and playing more than one role. Something we’ve seen him do in quite a few of his roles.

Which wall do you think was empty?

The film with the best actress had half of its wall full of DVDs. Eddie Murphy in a fat suit was sold out.

When I saw this, my heart sank. It solidified my fears about the future of human intellect. There was a time when critically acclaimed work was the same as commercially successful work. There was a time when popular fiction was also the fiction with a deeper meaning. This time has passed.

Instead of consuming something interesting and unique, something with real, redeeming value, most American’s would rather watch Larry the Cable Guy talk about how much his grandmother farts.

“Hey honey, hurry up! I think Larry’s going to talk about poop again!”

I would like to think that this is just a phase. I would like to believe that because of this war and the terrible toll it is taking on us, what with our rationed use of gasoline and all the conservation we do, that we just want to forget about all of our serious troubles in the world. It could be that we avoid substantial information and intellectual entertainment as some kind of defense mechanism.

Americans have a lot of choices today, but we rarely make the that have a positive impact on the world around us. Instead of taking in the difficult news and hearing the voices of artists with substance, we hide away in the enormous shadow of Norbit’s gigantic wife.

But it all seems to come back to our quest for knowledge. We’re afraid of the war, so we’re afraid to hear about it. But if the most watched news network never reports on the war, how is it possible to be afraid of it?

If we’re not afraid, then we just don’t care. That’s not what’s going on, is it?

Don’t be afraid. E-mail Josh at [email protected].