The purpose of news is to look for the truth, no matter how unpleasant. This is never easy on television, where the emphasis is on glamour, distraction and selling deodorant. So give ABC some credit for the “20/20” (9 p.m., ABC) special “Babyland,” hosted by Elizabeth Vargas.

Vargas travels to a place where infant mortality has been an epidemic for decades, where a black baby is three times less likely to reach his or her first birthday than a white baby.

The place is not in Haiti or Africa, but in Memphis, Tenn., where a graveyard formerly known as Potter’s field has become the resting place for the infants of the poor, a forlorn scrap of sacred ground known as “Babyland.”

Vargas teams up with a pregnant black teenage girl and her mentor, a middle-class white lady from the richer side of town.

Inspired by her religion, the woman encourages the girl to take her baby to term, to make weekly visits to a clinic, to eat well and to avoid the stress of the streets.

While the focus is on infant mortality, it opens a window on the effects of poverty.

Like the recent CNN series “Black in America,” it shows the daily grind of living in abandoned neighborhoods where transportation is spotty and the streets dangerous. Every trip to work, to a health clinic or to a market requires a patchwork of bus routes.

A chore that would require a five-minute car ride becomes an hours-long ordeal.

¢ The popular musical franchise takes on the Bollywood film phenomenon in “The Cheetah Girls One World” (7 p.m., Disney).

¢ Keisha Whitaker hosts “Who Are You Wearing?” (9 p.m., TLC), a talent contest giving four aspiring designers the chance to make a red-carpet outfit for a guest celebrity. The show puts the emphasis on “aspiring.” As for talent, you be the judge.

¢ Can anything be done about climate change? “Discovery Project Earth” (8 and 9 p.m., Discovery) showcases scientists and experts with radical notions to stop glaciers from melting, to revive forests and reverse the effects of greenhouse gases.

¢ Postponed from last week, “Celebrity Crises: 10 Most Shocking Mental Disorders” (8 p.m., E!) details Hollywood heartaches including eating disorders and compulsive hoarding.

Tonight’s other highlights

Note: Local listings may vary because of preseason NFL coverage.

¢ Dallas hosts Houston in preseason NFL action (7 p.m., CBS).

¢ Summer Olympics (7 p.m., NBC) events include track and field and diving.

¢ Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith star in the 2004 thriller “Collateral” (7 p.m., ABC).

¢ Adrian falls for a model who is also a murder suspect on “Monk” (8 p.m., USA).

¢ Murder on an oil rig on “Psych” (9 p.m., USA).

¢ A writer of Westerns (Joseph Cotten) investigates the murder of a mysterious friend (Orson Welles) in postwar Vienna in the 1949 mystery “The Third Man” (9 p.m., Eastern).

¢ Comic Jeffrey Ross presents “No Offense: Live from New Jersey” (10:30 p.m., Comedy Central).