Katie and the News
It was difficult to judge Katie Couric's debut tonight on "The CBS Evening News" if you've drifted as far away from the networks' nightly newscasts as I have. What changes can be attributed to her presence, and which were made months, if not years, ago? Beats me. I've been either working, playing, or watching "Simpsons" re-runs. Same as you.I can tell you what I saw tonight, though. I saw a lot of elements that reminded me of "CBS Sunday Morning." A light report by "humorist" Steve Hartman, a brief in-studio interview with NY Times columnist Thomas Freidman, and a commentary delivered in front of a black backdrop-- the twist on the latter, a recurring segment-to-be called "Free Speech" that will be produced and orated by a different person each night, not always famous. (Tonight, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock; on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh.)
Ultimately, does it matter who hosts the news anyway? The half-hour nightly news is a relic of another time. And despite aspersions to the contrary, cable television news is just as passe. Even the most popular of the cable news commentators would murder for the ratings that CBS Late Late Show variety host Craig Ferguson commands in the wee small hours. The only thing that matters is the collective reaction of their herd of talking heads; and more and more, that herd is simply reacting to the blogosphere. The net is providing the persistence of focus that used to be common in the network news. Collectively, the bloggers are the ones keeping our leaders' feet to the fire while the TV and radio stations appease the corporate paymasters. It's the bloggers that did in Dan Rather, Trent Lott, Joe Lieberman, George Allen, and quite possibly yet, Hillary Clinton.
Two or three newspapers still lead the parade for Washington decision-makers, and even the on-line pundits, when it comes to establishing news priorities, but television outlets haven't taken those cues for a generation. They're simply on the lookout for interesting pictures.
Couric had but 22 minutes to recap the world events of the day, and her producers devoted three of those to the croc hunter and Tom Cruise's baby. (Combine them, pallie, then you've got yourself a story!) As anchor, Couric is really just directing traffic. The meat of the broadcast each day will be in stories like Anthony Mason's piece tonight on Shell Oil's presence in the Gulf of Mexico on a day when Chevron struck for what may be as much as 15 billion barrels of oil and natural gas liquids. Important story, but time evidently didn't allow for further pursuit of the intriguing report that Shell lost hundreds of millions in damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but still managed a $25 billion profit for fiscal 2005.
I'm rooting for Katie Couric for a number of reasons. Nostalgia, for one. CBS' news division has really been the only one on television capable of effecting significant change in the culture during its history. Reason #2: that it would put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that phony gravitas, a la Tom Brokaw, is a requirement of a network news anchor. For Couric's critics, "gravitas" has been simply a codeword to really mean that she has too feminine of sensibilities to sit in the big chair, and that she comes up one penis short on her resume. Finally, three, and the reason that marks me a hypocrite on reason number two, that I find Couric as pleasant to look at following an eight hour work day as I do before that day begins.
The program, other than that, will remain as inconsequential in my life as it has been since I was in grade school. By perusing my favorite websites during work, I can already know the stories I will see on Couric's newscasts, plus I've seen the first national reports that Karl Rove's father was gay, that Condoleeza Rice likened the Iraqi War to the U.S. Civil War in the latest issue of Essence magazine, that a missile was fired last week at a helicopter carrying John McCain in the Republic of Georgia, and that the chief war critic in the Congress, Jack Murtha, believes we need "to either change the course in Iraq... or reinstitute the draft."
Oh, and one more thing, I'm pissed that CBS didn't take one of my all-time great ideas. Their ratings, and their news and network reputations, would go through the roof if they went commercial free during the half-hour nightly report. Eight minutes of relevance and depth could be added to the content, and the boner pill ads would find empty commercial slots elsewhere.
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Another story on "The CBS Evening News" was the stepping down of Bill Ford as the head of the Ford Motor Company. As usual, business and investor news gets high priority on these broadcasts. But what about labor news? Usually nothing. All we've been getting lately are some vague reports of economic growth. But these numbers tell a starkly different tale. President Bush must have been talking through his ass yesterday when he said his tax cuts were helping American laborers.
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The network entertainment divisions give us "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas and "The Ten Commandments" each Easter Sunday. Why not "The Grapes of Wrath" on Labor Day?
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This is the feature story of the day.
9/6/06 correction: Couric's producers did not designate three minutes of on-air time to TomKat's baby ("KittyCat") and the crocodile hunter. Couric is serving as her own editor and made the decision to report those stories.
posted by CM @ 5:52 PM
3 Comments:
Are you arguing that tax cuts hurt laborers? If so I suggest that you start signing 10% more of your paycheck over to the government every month.
These numbers tell the opposite story. I can come up with any number of reasons for your data and this data to support or not support laborers. Lies, damn lies, and statistics... TA
I'm arguing that Bush's tax cuts don't help laborers at all because working- and middle-class people aren't getting the cuts. The growing lower middle class is getting pennies back in tax cuts, and their returns mean virtually nothing when the cost of college loans and other expenses are going through the roof.
I don't doubt your statistics, but they're aren't contradictory. There may have been some investor growth and rising incomes (relative to inflation?), but the MEDIAN incomes show that the vast majority of Americans aren't feeling the growth. They're watching the wealthiest keep more and more.
CM, the first paragraph of your comment reads like a great argument for more tax cuts:-)
About the second paragraph, I could argue that lower median income helps the “poor” and hurts the “rich.” Take the numbers below to be yearly incomes in $ thousands. Let the second column be last year and the first column be the year before that (two years ago). The median income dropped by 5% from 40 to 38. However, everyone below the median saw huge increases in their yearly incomes while those above the median all saw huge reductions in their incomes. Here the wealthy keep less and less. Now compare the first column to the third column. Here everyone sees his or her income increase except for that one person in the middle. The vast majority feels the growth yet the median still dropped by 5%.
That’s the problem with the median. It only tells you about that single data point in the middle of millions. There is no way you can use that one single statistic to back up the points that your are trying to make. TA
15,25,25
20,30,30
25,35,35
35,37,37
40,38,38
50,39,60
60,45,70
80,60,90
100,70,100
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