SOMETIMES I'd like to throw a dark cloth over the electronic birdcage that's 24-hour cable news.

Not only don't I care if Polly wants a cracker, I don't care what Polly - or Paula or Aaron or any of their cable-news counterparts - has to say during those long stretches between news conferences when there's nothing really to say but the show nevertheless must go on.

We've been here before so many times. Princess Diana. JFK Jr. The grim aftermath of Sept. 11. O.J. and Chandra, anthrax and hanging chads, it's all been one long story.

And yet while much of what we've been fed by CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC under the guise of "breaking news" has been stupid, endless churning in the name of ratings, it wasn't until quite recently that I started to think of it as dangerous.

From the beginning of the D.C.-area sniper saga, though, it was clear that reporters were working in a war zone. And that the enemy almost certainly had access to a television set.

We may not know for some time, if ever, how much the constant speculation about the sniper's predilections - a possible aversion to working weekends, for instance - or the focus on the closing of roads and schools and the reports on satellite surveillance in and around D.C. actually influenced his, or their, choice of targets and locales.

What we do know, though, is that in a world where almost anyone we might choose to fight has access to CNN, television news has a huge stake in the argument that reporters should be given greater access to the front than this administration is inclined to grant them. Now more than ever, less might be more.

That wasn't the direction things were moving yesterday, though, as talking heads engaged in much back-patting, pointing out that it was the late-night news reports of the license plate and description of the suspects' vehicle that probably led to its discovery a few hours later, with two men sleeping inside.

Good for them. They had news, and they got the word out.

But by late morning, the "news" had become the live feed of a truck pulling a white trailer that contained the alleged sniper's car being transported from a rest stop on I-70. From the way they kept showing it, you'd have thought O.J. was driving.

On the Fox News Channel, Trevor Hewick, a former Washington, D.C., police detective, was startling anchor Brigitte Quinn by being harshly critical of the sniper investigation, saying that if it turned out that the motive was money all along, then at least four people might have died unnecessarily. Quinn, perhaps not wanting to open that can of worms, got him off fast.

Shortly afterward, on MSNBC, legal correspondent Dan Abrams appeared equally flummoxed by anchor Christy Musumeci, who wanted to talk about the prospects for executing the pair - who at this point hadn't been charged - and who, when Abrams tried to suggest she might be getting ahead of herself, moved on to the possibility of an insanity plea.

Security expert and former New York detective Bo Dietl was a colorful presence on CNN, there to walk viewers through the nuts and bolts of interrogating suspects - none of which would come as news to even casual viewers of "NYPD Blue" - and to suggest that it would make things easier if the suspects didn't ask for lawyers.

Do tell.

Assuming that the two men in custody are responsible for the shootings, what went on yesterday isn't likely to incite them to further mayhem, but I keep thinking there has to be a better way to orchestrate this scary dance between criminals and the camera.

John Timoney isn't as quick to judge as I am.

The former Philadelphia police commissioner, who now works for Dietl's security firm, has made 40 to 50 TV appearances in connection with the sniper story, "and I've probably turned down as many," he said yesterday.

Though he admits to having been occasionally frustrated during his time in Philadelphia by reporters who ferreted out information before he'd announced it, he's not a fan of holding back.

"You should release as much information as you can to the public without jeopardizing the investigation...People's lives are at stake," he said.

"The idea that the vast majority of crimes are solved by detectives is nonsense. It's the public that solves them," he said.

Yet Timoney, too, worries about "experts" who may go too far. "I try to be a little careful. But I see some of the people they bring in and there's no expertise," he said, noting that one guy introduced as a former cop spent just nine months on the force.

"You have people commenting on what this chief [Montgomery County's Charles Moose] is doing without ever having been in his position," he said.

Timoney, by the way, isn't all that sure how much time the sniper or snipers logged in front of the TV.

"Their names were out on the air by 10:30 or 11. And these guys were sleeping in the car. It's extraordinary. The only thing I can think of is they were listening to music."