Viewers in search of a modern Robin Hood heist dramedy could do much worse than “Leverage” (8 p.m., TNT), the farfetched, high-tech morality tale now in its second season. Timothy Hutton stars as a con man gone straight who leads a team of similarly reformed computer hackers, grifters and fancy rope climbers to help victims get back at the rich and nefarious people and/or corporations that wronged them.

Tonight, the squad takes on a ruthless cable newscaster who carelessly and callously destroys the reputation of a school-bus driver and Gulf War vet.

Not to give too much away here, but the gang hoists the host on her own petard, luring her into a swamp of vast conspiracies, that when reported, force her audience and her superiors to question her very sanity.

While this “Leverage” is a lot of fun, the writers have clearly not watched cable news for a while. Cable talent that buy into vast conspiracy theories and act irrationally on camera do not get fired. They get promoted.

Haven’t they seen “Glenn Beck” (4 p.m., Fox News) or “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (5 p.m., CNN)? Both men have aimed their shows at a cretinous demographic of cross-burning crazies while their networks have stood by silently and cashed their sponsors’ checks.

Corporately owned cable news channels have made a conscious business decision to play up racism for ratings and to stoke hate and resentment for profit. Beck (“I want my country back!”) and Dobbs (who harrumphed that the president was an undocumented alien) are clearly out to stoke bigotry and incite violence.

But Beck and Dobbs are hardly alone. Bill O’Reilly greeted the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination with the question, “Should white people be concerned?” Over on the “liberal” MSNBC, Pat Buchanan used the nomination as a chance to declare, “White people built America and deserve more,” a clear implication that her nomination is an affront to America and the (master) race that built it.

Racism, fear and bigotry have always been with us. But now the kind of ugly rhetoric once consigned to shortwave radio, fringe Web sites and the feverous pamphlets sold at John Birch Society bookstores has been made mainstream on shows owned by some of the world’s biggest media companies.

Is there really so much profit to be made in hate? How can the CEOs, not to mention the shareholders, of News Corp., Universal and Time Warner live with themselves? The 30 pieces of silver they earn for airing Beck and Dobbs and Buchanan just can’t be the price of their souls.

Tonight’s other highlights

• You only die twice on “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).

• “Live from Lincoln Center” (7 p.m., PBS, check local listings) presents “Joshua Bell and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra.”

• The choices continue on “America’s Got Talent” (8 p.m., NBC).

• Bear survives the Arctic Circle on “Man vs. Wild” (8 p.m., Discovery).

• A theater murder may have been “staged” on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).

• Come Haiti and high water on “The Philanthropist” (9 p.m., NBC).

• Scheduled on “Primetime” (9 p.m., ABC): the mystery of a teen runaway.