In the season premier of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ this fall, a band of human refugees on a distant planet found themselves the victims of an android invasion.

The androids, called Cylons, immediately established martial law, built a prison and conscripted humans for a police force. To retaliate, the humans created their own insurgency, attacked the Cylons with improvised explosive devices and took out members of their own police force with suicide bombers.

Sound familiar? It should.

But for those who don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the world, here’s a hint. Change the setting to present-day Iraq. Replace ‘Cylons’ with ‘coalition forces’ and ‘humans’ with ‘Iraqis.’ Isn’t that nifty?

It’s a growing trend among television shows today: the blending of politics, current events and fiction to tell a new kind of story on the small screen. It’s not necessarily a new movement for TV, but it pops up more and more as the years go on. Programs ranging from comedies to serious dramas all rip many of their plot elements from today’s headlines.

And this tactic is not just so producers, writers and major cable networks can jazz up their stories to make a quick buck. They add immediate intrigue into their stories by turning the week’s current events into the week’s current television episode.

When we see Cartman and company take on terrorists in Afghanistan in ‘South Park’ or watch as Jon Stewart and company slam George W. Bush on ‘The Daily Show,’ we immediately get a sense about what’s happening in the world, even if it’s only on a subconscious level.

Bob Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, calls it the ‘fifth estate.’ Whereas journalism is supposed to serve as the ‘fourth estate’ by providing a check on government, entertainment in the form of satire, comedy and even science fiction fills in the gaps where today’s journalists inevitably fail.

‘The fourth estate of journalism failed leading up to the Iraq war,’ Thompson said. ‘It created a real vacuum. That vacuum was filled by the fifth estate, which was comedy.’

Beyond the entertainment factor, there is also a level of responsibility of which writers and producers must be aware. It’s OK to inject an opinion when commenting on the news, but don’t skew the facts to make your point. If you’re going to use current events, use them accurately. Leave the spin to Bill O’Reilly.

Steven Kovach is a featured columnist whose columns appear Fridays in The Daily Orange. E-mail him at sjkovach@gmail.com

Published on November 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm