RIPPED (off) FROM THE HEADLINES

(My apologies for SHOUTING in the title, but I'm just repeating it in the manner that it's delivered.)

Quite often, I see ads for TV shows whose plots (according to the ads) are "ripped from the headlines", as though this were a good thing. Isn't that just a euphemism for "our writers are incompetent and can't come up with plots on their own"?