As a serious blogger, it is my responsibility to watch over mainstream news websites in order to advocate the responsible use of words, syllable-usage and sometimes even individual letters.

I haven't appointed myself Chief Journalistic Ethics Watchdog because it's an easy task, or because I thought it would attract women. Quite the contrary. The reality is that I didn't even feel like doing it, but then I realized I didn't have anything else going on, so it seemed like a good fit.

However, it wasn't long before I realized that the task was a daunting one, and quite larger in scope than I first imagined. So I focused all efforts on abcnews.com due to time constraints and its high standing in the alphabet.

Abcnews.com is interesting in that they specialize in what I like to call "soft news." It's a term I've coined myself and it means news with a low probability of being accurate. The other meaning of this term is news which has 5% informational value, and 95% entertainment value. Seriously, that place is basically TMZ with a splash of Obama thrown in every once in awhile to mix things up.

Yet this offense alone is not significant enough to warrant a response by my global watchdog organization. Even the hidden camera investigative reporting exposés are acceptable in my book--I think all of us deserve to know if auto mechanics are honest (no), or if we accidentally donated 25,000 dollars to Nigeria's non-existent sister country, Nigeria II.

The problem is, this reporting style wasn't exciting enough for abcnews.com. They felt they had to move things to Reporting DefCon Level 9. DefCon Level 9 is where you pay actors, set them loose on the public in various real-world situations and roll the tape. It's like Magic News! Except not so fast, because the watchdog (me) is on the case and he has a few things to say about it.

Two recent "stories" come to mind. The first was when abcnews sent two hired actors to Paris, France, and had them play over-the-top obnoxious Americans. Yes, apparently you have to pay people for that now. Are there currently not enough tools of all nationalities to start four separate global tool companies, or what? I highly doubt it's necessary buy them all Tommy Bahama shirts, fanny packs and plane tickets to Paris.

Not to mention, this reporting technique seems a lot like having your camera man break into someone's house, kill all occupants, and then film it. Big surprise, we got the exclusive!

The other story they ran recently was about hate crime, and the number of bystanders who were willing to intervene when three (actor) skinheads assault a Latino man (actor) on a public street. This is supposed to measure what, how many people were willing to die that day? That's like throwing a Latino man into molten lava and then booing any bystanders who don't immediately jump in to save him. I don't want to have to spell out the analogy for you guys here, but I think both scenarios are equally poor indicators of race relations in America.

Just remember, whenever abcnews tries to suck you in with a "late-breaking news story", that just means it was late in the day before they were able to hire enough actors to stage a realistic-looking forest fire or something. And yes, they will probably have the exclusive.