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LOS ANGELES— The time news consumers spend reading, watching and listening to the latest word out of Washington, Kabul or their local city hall can be enriched by adding one element: “Media Matters” on PBS. 

The ”60 Minutes”-style series dissects the newsgathering process for the public in a way that is involving, nonpolitical and wholly informative. 

That makes it a rarity in almost every aspect. Most media criticism, especially that published in journals, is directed toward a professional audience and unlikely to engage any but die-hard news buffs. 

The few TV shows that analyze media performance are of the talking-head genre that favor a quick pass at the hot topic du jour. 

“Media Matters” is unafraid to tackle subjects that aren’t sexy but are important. And when it takes on controversial fare it is forthright and evenhanded. 

At a time of crisis, when people expect more from news organizations — and can be heard expressing disappointment and confusion over what they’re getting — such a program gains in importance. 

“People depend on information to run their lives, whether they like it or not, no matter how critical they are of the media,” said series host Alex Jones, a Pulitzer Prize winner and director of Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. 

“What we’ve tried to do is make how the process works clearer, examine the process and the journalistic enterprises that are doing it and hold them accountable,” Jones said in an interview. 

Consider the series’ latest installment airing 10 p.m. EST Thursday on PBS (check local listings), which includes a segment on how broad the scope of college sports reporting should be. The focus is on two Fresno Bee writers covering ethical violations by Fresno State basketball players under famed coach Jerry Tarkanian. 

Another segment profiles Jorge Mota, an investigative reporter for Chicago’s Spanish-language newspaper Exito! (Success!) who has become the voice of the city’s large Mexican immigrant population. 

“Almost everything you see on television is negative .... We think that there’s really good journalism out there too and we felt it was important to put that in front of people,” Jones said. 

The program opens with the most timely segment, an examination of the relationship between the press and the Pentagon and its effect on coverage of the war in Afghanistan. 

Through interviews with military officials and reporters from The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and elsewhere, “Media Matters” details the changing balance between national security concerns and media access. 

It is a shift toward increased government secrecy that the military defends as necessary in an unusual “special ops”-dominated war. But many journalists find it unwarranted in light of past war reportage. 

“I’ve been following coverage of combat situations since the Vietnam War and I know of no instance where the military has made a case or even claimed that the press put lives in jeopardy or operations in jeopardy,” said Bill Kovach, former editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

The show, however, acknowledges division within even media ranks. 

“The job of the government is not to make reporters’ jobs easier,” said Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard. “They have other things to do than to maximize the amount of information that reporters get.” 

A poll conducted for “Media Matters” on whether wartime press coverage should be self-regulated or controlled by the Pentagon found that 72 percent of Americans favored military control; only 17 percent thought journalists should decide on their own. 

The survey illustrates “continuing popular skepticism of the press and its role in our society,” Jones suggests in the program. 

“Media Matters” is skewed somewhat toward print journalism, said executive producer Daniel B. Polin. “Print journalists tend to engage subject matter more deeply and longer. The stories are more interesting,” he said. 

The greatest flaw is the show’s infrequency: The previous episode aired last fall and only one other is planned for this season. Increased funding would allow for more episodes, said Polin. 

Money aside, the challenge is to find stories that are revelatory and colorful enough for television, he said. That, according to Jones, reflects a dilemma all journalism faces. 

The public doesn’t want “a media that is trivial, that spends all its time on Monica Lewinsky,” Jones said. “At the same time they want to be entertained, engaged and have entertainment values injected in their news so they can watch it as easily as they watch ’Seinfeld.’ 

“That’s a tall order.” 

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On the Net: 

http://www.pbs.org 

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Lynn Elber can be reached at lelber“at“ap.org