There are times I’d like to heave the television set out the front door, unless it’s a night for “The West Wing” or “ER,” or when I turn to ESPN to watch the Masters. Not that I know a thing about golf, but I’m lulled into near hypnosis by the whispering announcers. And by the posture-perfect ease with which those dapper, loose-sleeved golfers swing, walk or putt. The colorful scene in itself is mesmerizing: the manicured courses complete with ponds, southern sunshine and the lush green of the greens.

I relax – as if enjoying a massage – when watching a golf tournament on a dank Sunday afternoon in Maine.

Maybe that’s all television is supposed to be: entertainment, in the form of “Seinfeld” reruns, “Saturday Night Live” or even Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe it’s best not to take it seriously.

Back in the 1950s, Edward R. Murrow predicted that TV could go in one of two directions: It could teach, illuminate and even inspire us, he said, or it could be nothing more than wires and lights in a box.

On this point, I happen to agree with author Bernard Goldberg: “Let’s be real generous and say the jury is still out on that one.”

But while I’m not taking television seriously, Goldberg certainly is … so much so that the 30-year veteran CBS reporter blew the whistle on his own industry by writing critical columns in The Wall Street Journal and, subsequently, his best-selling book, “Bias.”

In “Bias,” Goldberg – an Emmy Award winner – lashes out at the television news media and accuses them of distorting the news, slanting their coverage while insisting they’re just reporting the facts.

Goldberg claims liberal bias has pervaded the mainstream media – conservatives have been arguing this for years – and he charges that journalistic integrity has been pawned.

Further, the former TV reporter offers compelling evidence that “entertainment trumps hard news” every time.

“This is what happens when entertainment and news get too chummy, when the so-called values of one become the values of the other. This is how the game is played in the shallow money trench and the plastic hallway,” he writes.

After reading “Bias,” I’m convinced the television news business – as we knew it in the days of Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley – has been changed by ratings … and by the money such ratings generate.

But I have hope, as apparently does Bernard Goldberg.

He remembers turning to the TV newscasters when John Kennedy was assassinated, “not just for facts, but also for reassurance – that despite the terrible tragedy, America was going to be OK.”

“It happened when ‘Challenger’ blew up. And it happened again on Sept. 11, 2001. … On that day we all turned to television. We turned to Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw and the others. And they did a fine job, as they often do when covering tragedy. They showed empathy. There were fair and accurate. … They gave us the news on that day the way they should give us the news all the time, whether the story is about race or feminism or taxes or gay rights or anything else. For a change, they gave it to us straight,” wrote Goldberg.