In this illuminating look at what has gone wrong in broadcast newswriting, veteran network newswriter Mervin Block shares his feelings on this alarming decay. His analysis of television news anchors' words reveals a mangling and strangling of the English language, as well as violations of broadcast style, but worse, there is a disturbing amount of distortions, deceptions, discrepancies, inaccuracies, time-twisting, and misrepresentations. Offering an intelligent critique of the most popular broadcast news outlets, this work looks at how substandard news reporting affects democracy at its most basic levels.