WPCNR ACROSS THE ANCHOR DESK. By John F. Bailey. September 20, 2006: The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric debuted two weeks ago nationally and about the only thing going for it is there’s a superbly turned out slightly older blonde on it.
If you’re looking for hard news, the CBS Evening News no longer has it. If you’re looking for reported news, there’s a lot less of it. If you want dirty laundry cleaned up, sugar-coated by “the bubble-headed bleached blonde with a gleam in her eye,” you now have it.
The content has been boiled down to 11 minutes of hard news about three to 4 stories, 7 at the most, a field report from a correspondent, a Free Speech segment featuring a celebrity commentator. There was casualty count in Iraq given on either day. (Remember Walter Cronkite’s Vietnam war dead crawl?). There is a Snapshots Segment of fluff. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, is to this repawta, a “feel good about bad news” show.
I love Katie Couric’s legs, which are the highlights of the show. Entertainment Tonight was launched by the legs of its beautiful commentator Mary Hart, and the handlers at CBS have managed to give her a wardrobe that lifts her out of the vacuous cheerleader persona who captivated traveling executives in the Radissons, Hiltons, and Sheratons of America, waiting for meetings to begin on the Today Show for the past fifteen years.
Ms. Couric’s softball interviews for fifteen years were built up as better than they are, and her lack of a followup question is legend. This was clearly evident the first two nights. Katie Couric after all these years cannot bring herself to throw a brushback question.
Unfortunately that is not the job of the news. The news is to put reality in your face, or it used to be. That’s what I take from two weeks of Katie.
After the opening 11 minutes of hard news, such as it is. An event or two or three are tied together, given a common theme and analyzed by a correspondent, as if that proved anything. Then you get 11 minutes of Today Show fluff that is not news at all but feel good pieces. Human interest. Celebrity bits.
There was no in-depth mention of business trends, (in a week of inflation news up and down) except for one major business story each day – the Shell oil platforms in the Gulf Tuesday, and the General Motors story Wednesday.
The show – and that’s what it is, not a newscast -- intends to use Ms. Couric’s “strength:” interviews. She interviewed a Times reporter on national security her opening night and President George W. Bush Wednesday evening, using only three questions on the CIA prison transfer and request for congress to approve military tribunals. On another show discussing pre-cervical cancer drugs, a doctor let slip statistics on how sexually active fifteen year old girls are. Now that is a statement that Ms. Couric needed to delve deeper into. Did she? No.
On the homeland security interview on opening night, there was no mention of homeland security and border crossings, no questioning of homeland security inspection of cargo, and no question about homeland security surveillance of foreign students – all very valid concerns. Asking “Are we safer now?” of Thomas Friedman as Ms. Couric did is a box canyon question. People think it is tough but the really tough questions are specific ones. Actually Ms. Couric is not alone in asking easy to wrangle questions – the print press does this all the time in news conferences.
A little news judgment please.
According to the CBS News Media Relations, the show is edited by Ms. Couric as Managing Editor, with Rome Hartman, Executive Producer a 15 year producer at 60 Minutes. Judging the first two editions of CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC, we have a 30-minute Today”Show.
It is a show concentrating on style and feelings, and how we perch on a desk, while wasting incredible time in segues and graphic intros.
You have only 22 minutes to tell people what is going on. Katie and Rome are killinh 11 minutes with stories on the muppets, a blind teenager, pictures of the Cruise-Homes baby, a painting class in a South American country, plus editorial commentary from personalities. This is not news. It’s fluff. It is a margaritaville cocktail hour, not scotch on the rocks news.
If Ms. Couric and Mr. Hartman are going for the ratings with a newscast that makes you feel that things aren’t so bad out there and the human race is wonderful, and America’s o.k. they may be making a business decision that will work, but they are not doing a news show in any sense of the word in their first two weeks and the ratings are flattening.
I question their news objectivity because they stop short of the hard out there question. How do they get the ultimate “get,” the President, on the day he announces a major policy change on prisoners of war? Of course you take the interview. But does Katie ask the question, (after the President tells her, we have to have victory in Iraq, and mentions dire consequences if the Iraqi government fails) “Mr. President, how do you define victory in Iraq?” She does not. Because she knows he has no idea.
Maybe, she did ask that question – but on the outtakes that wound up on her 10 o’clock special later that evening. And, another thing on the Bush interview.
Bush mentions that the prisoner interrogations in the CIA secret prisons lead to the foiling of an anthrax plot and a plot to fly airplanes into buildings somewhere on the West Coast. Could Ms. Couric have asked what prisoners supplied that information, and if any arrests were made. This is the first time those factoids were made public. She should have gotten his answers down to that off camera and reported it in copy if they did not have time for running the interview answer.
Katie Couric may not think she should ask those kinds of question out of respect for the President. But, Ms. Couric, you are the network anchor, you got to ask it. You got to think. Or maybe it is why she’s a network anchor today, because she knows better not to think – too much.
The show is not being edited to bring you meaty news content.
In contrast, I recommend the nightly BBC 30-minute newscast that literally takes you around the world and is just packed with news you never see on Fox, CNN or MSNBC, CBS, NBC or ABC, that blows you away. It is better than any 30 minute slice of newscast you can watch on Fox News or CNN or ABC or NBC. I believe the BBC packs in about a story a minute, which gives you 22 news stories to about 4 to 7 for the CBS Evening News. The BBC stories are tightly written, delivered by a no-nonsense woman anchorette without the massive set, the “swoosh slides” and the anchor talks fast. The BBC is an adrenalin rush from the content alone.
Ms. Couric adopts the steadied pace as if she is trying to stretch to time – to give that “gravitas” of anchorman pace. However, she delivers too slowly as if she is conducting a class of third graders. In week two she resorted to a rundown of headlines then in-depth rundowns of the same headlines. I suggest this is a waste of time. Why say one thing, then say the same thing in more detail? It wastes time.
Nevertheless there’s her presence, excellent diction. Dividing up the program, teasing the next stories in a set format slows it down. I like her delivery, now if only I was getting more news. Remember, Katie and Rome, it’s the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric not the CBS Evening Tonight Show with Katie Couric
The Today show was put together as a series of news, stories of the day, and features to provide an update beginning of the day with people you trust and make you feel good. Today started the banter between personalities long before Eyewitness News ever thought of it. News personalities were bantered with and the interviews were slowpitch city.
They are now doing the Today show in 30 minutes every evening.
Ms. Couric and Mr. Hartman are getting paid huge bucks to get the CBS Evening News up in the ratings. They did a lot of preparation in putting together this show to give what they found out apparently people want. They are betting America wants to feel good. They have moved the Today Show to the evening. They are smarter than I am.
Judging from my experience in Westchester County, and the lack of response to local news coverage, and lack of concern of the citizens about how their governments are run and local trends, if “sophisticated” Westchester likes to feel good about the lies their leaders tell them, then Hartman and Couric may be very right and be very successful with this bubble-headed bleached blonde format. She is better to look at than Brian Williams and the Gibson guy.
Now – she should do very well with fraternity houses on the nation’s campuses. Whether there’s enough news here to hold the news traditionalists who watch these programs is debatable. I don’t think there is. Can she tear away the women to watch her during the dinner hour?
However, Bob Schieffer, the last great CBS newsman reported on the first week of the program, and stated when Ms. Couric asked in typical cliché fashion what do you think this CIA prison transfer means, Schieffer gave a classic analysis: “It gives congress something to do.” He also said busying congress with the proposal to give The President the right to conduct military tribunals would tie up congress and prevent them from working on things they should be working on like the deficit. This may be Schieffer’s last appearance on the program as a correspondent. It was a hilarious moment said in all earnesty.
That’s the trouble with the show in a nutshell – there is no time on a 30-minute show for commentary. You have 22 minutes of real airtime. Commentary means nothing unless it uses facts to demonstrate what is happening. Commentary limits the number of stories you can do. Besides commentary means nothing. It’s what has and is happening that counts.
When you watch the CBS Evening News With Katie Couric in its present editing policy, you learn a miniscule amount of what is happening in the world and why it is happening.
Give me my old fedora and a Lucky Strike in my nicotine stained finger tips holding the copy, the time zone clocks on the set and an old news ticker, rather than this cupcake in designer clothes with the legs up to here perched on an immaculate desk, looking like she just came back from lunch at Gotham Grill.
The news as we know has died.
