I suppose we ink-stained wretches should feel grateful, or at least curious, that MTV has turned its star-making machinery on the newspaper racket with “The Paper” (9:30 p.m., MTV), a documentary series about “The Circuit,” the prize-winning school weekly at a Florida high school.

Here’s one good thing about “The Paper”: The students look vaguely like human beings and not the ridiculously attractive shopping monsters that populate “The Hills.”

In fact, Amanda, the central character and main butt of the series’ jokes, is photographed in the least flattering light, with a nearly cruel focus on her prominent nose. Just in case you have any doubts, wait until she’s accompanied by tunes from “Funny Girl,” as if to emphasize a Streisand-esque attribute that has nothing to do with singing.

I’m a First Amendment purist, but I wouldn’t mind if Congress passed a law banning the use of the David Bowie-Freddy Mercury song “Under Pressure” to show people working on a deadline. It’s also astounding, but not surprising, that a show about a newspaper could go a whole episode without a single second devoted to writing, reporting, researching or work of any kind. It’s all egos, with aspiring editor-in-chief Amanda the biggest ego of all.

¢ Television has many powers. Its ability to distract (VH1); entertain (“The Office”); inform (“The NewsHour”); deceive (“The O’Reilly Factor”); anger (ditto); and sell (QVC) are well documented. But the moments when television reaches for the sublime, the beautiful, the poetic and transporting are few indeed. So viewers in search of that transcendent moment shouldn’t miss “Walt Whitman” on “American Experience” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings), featuring actor Chris Cooper as the voice of the poet.

This contemplative look at a uniquely American figure presents us with his central contradiction. While Whitman set out to celebrate the human body and its pleasures as a temple for a new democratic American spirituality, the central event of his life was his work during the Civil War tending to sick and dying soldiers whose mutilated bodies and terrified final moments he described with a journalist’s eye and a poet’s heart.

It’s fitting that this profile air on the eve of the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Whitman and the president had a passing acquaintance on the muddy streets of wartime Washington, and Whitman referred to him as the “redeemer” president even before his martyrdom made that moniker all the more tragically apt.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ The search for a biker’s killer on “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ Pop stars perform and collect statuettes at the 2008 CMT Music Awards (7 p.m., CMT).

¢ John recalls his days as a criminal on the season finale of “New Amsterdam” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ A nanny for the posh set turns up dead on “CSI: Miami” (9 p.m., CBS).

¢ Kelly Preston guest stars on “Medium” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ Aspiring singers compete on “Miss Rap Supreme” (9 p.m., VH1).

Cult choice

A reporter (Don Knotts) passes a night in a haunted house in the 1966 comedy “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” (7 p.m., AMC).