Let’s see. Katie Couric facing down Joe McCarthy in "Good Night, and Good Luck." Katie looking at the TV cameras, pausing to check the lump in her throat, as she announces President John F. Kennedy has been pronounced dead in Dallas. Katie on the floor of the Democratic Convention in 1968 fighting off a punch to the stomach to report the police hooliganism going on in Chicago that epic night. Edward R. Murrow. Walter Cronkite. A youthful Dan Rather. That is how this columnist remembers the best of CBS News. Will Katie Couric prove herself worthy?
That’s the real question beneath the hosannas being tossed around as Couric becomes the first woman to anchor a TV newscast by herself. Is she the right woman? Is this truly TV news coming out of the dark ages, as the Inquirer’s Gail Shister proclaimed? Or is it just another cynical merging of TV news and entertainment?
Cardella, you liberal, you’re supposed to rejoice in this breakthrough in women’s rights. Hey you, I’d be rejoicing if it were Christiane Amanpour or Andrea Mitchell replacing Bob Schieffer, but Katie must be a taste I never acquired.
When the poobahs of CBS tell me they hired Couric because of her journalistic reputation, I get just a bit suspicious. Why not, then, promote Lesley Stahl? Is this the same Couric I see on "Today" or Mike Wallace they’re talking about? What exactly did Katie do on "Today" that makes her the heir to a once-proud news network?
Maybe it was the way she made a salad with Martha Stewart? Or was it the clever way she interviewed both celebrities and a Pakistani president with that same "gee whiz" girl-next-door look on her face?
CBS says it was Couric’s interviewing skills that sold them. All I saw was a lightweight personality reading questions off a tablet in her lap some staff person obviously prepared for her. I mean, she did a great job with her colonoscopy on TV, but you can only do that once every three to five years, right?
Let me turn this situation around for those of you braying about Couric being a great choice. If Matt Lauer had been chosen, what would you be saying? Lauer is even fluffier than Katie (except where his hair is concerned). He would be just as bad a choice to follow Murrow, Cronkite and Rather. So don’t do the chauvinism thing on me, please.
If you analyze the CBS move, the selection of Couric is the opposite of a breakthrough for women. It’s insulting. Couric just represents the latest dagger in the heart of network news. Read some of those articles the retired Ted Koppel is writing in The New York Times about what is happening to all three network news divisions – the merge of news and entertainment. Back in the day, nobody expected the network news division to do anything other than report the news. The entertainment division made the money; the news division gave you the prestige. Never the twain would meet. Make that never the twain should have met. Once the giants who ran these networks gave way to glorified salespeople, TV news had to show the same profit as "Entertainment Tonight." It wasn’t long before you couldn’t tell much difference between the two.
The loss of viewers to the emerging 24-hour cable news networks just made the situation more acute. CBS was last in the ratings. What CBS President Les Moonves needed was star power to save the day and turn a profit. Enter Katie.
Don’t tell me TV network news is no longer important. I’ll grant you cable has made inroads, but it was NBC’s Brian Williams who did the best job covering Hurricane Katrina every night. In times of crisis, people will still turn to their trusted TV news anchor.
Look, this is not about Katie Couric. I’m sure she’s a nice person. She gives us the feeling she’s really just the girl next door, except with a million-dollar wardrobe and carefully tanned legs. Her intellectual level doesn’t intimidate us like Mitchell’s. Her fresh-scrubbed look is more American than the exotic Amanpour. CBS figures maybe Katie will bring a whole new audience to TV news. Moonves, no doubt, wants younger viewers who will buy new cars and those investment funds pitched on the nightly news – viewers younger than the usual CBS News demographic, whose main concern is not whether to take out Medicare Option D. That’s why Couric will be added to the roster of dinosaurs on "60 Minutes."
And that’s why you won’t see Stahl getting the CBS anchor job – too old, not quite as fresh looking as Katie.
Sound like a victory for women’s rights to you?
