The Anchoress

Being sick gives you too much time to think and stew, and my boredom level is so off-the-charts that I have been thinking about Katie Couric and the future of CBS Evening News.

Why bother, you ask? “Broadcast news is on the wane, Anchoress” you might say. “You said yourself that time constraints make the nightly news as penetrating as a prop knife. Blogs are where to be!”

Well, I happen to concur that some blogs are more dynamic in news deliverance than most news outlets. Pajamas Media and The Truth Laid Bear have been extraordinary in the past month, covering the war between Israel and Hezbollah, almost as things develop, with people on the ground giving eyewitness reports, while people “in their jammies,” like Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, EU Referendum, Confederate Yankee and The Jawa Report (among others) keep busy by taking second and third looks at the information coming from all sides - via both blogs and “legitimate media” - and seperating the wheat of truth from the chaff of propaganda and manipulation.

However, I also recognise that broadcast news is not going to go away. Up until the moment the levees of New Orleans broke and the press completely drowned its credibility in self-indulgent hysteria I would have told you that broadcast journalists were unbeatable when it came to breaking news. They certainly handled the attacks of 9/11/01 - and the immediate aftermath - with sound professionalism that did service to the nation and justified the public’s trust in the craft of journalism and the credibility of reporters.

Something happened after that, though, and I have often wondered if the devolution of the press in general and the mainstream broadcast media in particular didn’t have to do with the fact that a year after 9/11, President Bush’s poll numbers were still in the stratosphere. I began noticing that his more visionary speeches, such as his commencement address at West Point and this one at Whitehall went under-covered, with major networks actually cutting away from Whitehall in mid-speech, and (C-Span never replaying it), and I thought that was pretty interesting - and troubling. Broadcast media’s coverage of all things regarding Bush, the War on Terror and the issue of WMD’s underwent remarkable changes between the years 2002 and 2006, particularly re WMD, which the press suddenly seemed content to pretend no one had ever mentioned, prior to President Bush.

News delivery is now being fueled by emotionalism, which has gummed up a powerful engine. Things have gotten so far out of hand that broadcast media are now occasionally admitting that they are not even in control of some of what we’re seeing.

It would be easy to simply declare broadcast journalism “bad, mad and dangerous to know,” as did Lady Caroline Lamb of Lord Byron, but…we shouldn’t. For our own sake, we should hope that the saner heads still affiliated with broadcast news might pull the rest of the industry back from the hoary edge of self-destruction and irrelevence. To be a free and prosperous nation, we need a free, stable, responsible and unbeholden press. The “unbeholden press” is what we are most desperately hoping will somehow arise from the murk and mess of modern “big time professional journalism.”

So…and for God’s sake, I can’t believe I’m writing this…I am actually looking at Katie Couric and hoping that somehow she…(SHE, egad!) might be enjoined to undertake the huge and heroic task of recovering the credibility and respectability of the press, of fomenting a kind of rehabilitation of the craft. It would be a noble endeavor, and I have no reason at all to believe she’s capable of it. But for all that I was championing Dehlia Gallagher or Lester Holt for the CBS gig, I recognise that Katie Couric has to have something on the ball - be it a forceful and determined personality or more - to get where she has. I’m really hoping that somewhere inside all of the “glam and gloss of Katie” there is that quality of strength and independence (like biting on a piece of tinfoil) that works for something beyond mere “success” - something like restoration and recovery.

I have every reason to believe this will not happen. I have read more than I care to about Couric’s “listening tour” (made up of “select” opiners) and what it “taught” her and I’ve come away thinking she is spouting the most obvious sort of doublespeak, that can be taken one way on the surface and an entirely different way beneath it. I’m seeing “I went on a listening tour among select people, and they told me that they want me to explain everything to them…”

What I am getting is that the CBS Evening News is going to commit to even more aggressively “instructing” us rather than simply giving information, that while Couric is busy providing the “perspective and context” she says we’re demanding, it will be very easy to provide it with a bias. (”Why, this crap in N. Korea is happening because of [oh, let's just say] Bush’s multi-lateralism which we’ve been begging him to try elsewhere, but we like BI-lateralism in N. Korea, because that’s what Clinton used, and even though it didn’t work, we like the Clintonian template, in all things.)

While she’s busy providing “context and perspective” is she going to review just what a resounding failure the Clinton/Albright policy toward N. Korea was? I highly doubt it, and that’s a damn shame - because frankly THAT would provide some much needed context and clarity.

The Clinton/Albright fiasco will go unmentioned, though. As with every other catastrophe on the planet, there will be no hint that any trouble existed before January 2001, and nothing that occured before that date will have applications to “context” and “perspective.” The Israel/Lebanon war will continue to be reported without any reminders that Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, living peacably with that neighbor, except for Hezbollah’s aggressions. Never will it be mentioned that Yassar Arafat visited the WH more than any other “Head of State” between 1992 and 2000, (giving enormous prestige and credibility to an organization whose sole ambition was not the birthing of its own free state, but the destruction of every Jew it could get its hands on - a fact underplayed by the press even after Clinton tried to give Arafat 90% of what he said he wanted and Arafat ran away, with Albright toddling after him in hot pursuit).

Will we be reminded that the Palestinian response to Israel’s good faith pullout of the Gaza strip - meant to give the PA a chance to “build” its dream state - has resulted in nothing more than the Palestinians using that very site to launch missiles at Israel? Some “context” on that would be a really great thing. Couric providing that “perspective” would make her a legitimate heroine to more than half the nation, and it would frankly demonstrate both gravitas and guts. If she wants bang-up ratings, she should try that sort of “context” once in a while.

Couric was apparently quoted out of context when she said her going to Iraq to cover the war would be “too dangerous,” and I’m sure she didn’t like that - but the press misquotes or edits remarks of others all the time (I recall the night an audience member questioned Bush harshly and Bush’s entire response was reduced to one insipid line by the press). If Couric wants to be part of a sterling and responsible press that can stand up to blogger scrutiny, she needs to be the face of it.

(An aside: I’m sure Couric didn’t see it but many, many bloggers -myself included - applauded her remarks - whether she was quoted in context or not - both because she is a single parent and because the job of an anchor really should preclude one’s going out and sticking oneself into the middle of any story. Wouldn’t it be nice if Couric managed to be as fair to the blogs, or to the President, as most bloggers were to Katie in that instance? I’m not saying “all the time,” but once in a freaking while, wouln’t it be refreshing?)

I want to give Couric a chance - but I do not want her instruction. I don’t want anyone “explaining it all” to me.

Americas are - by and large - pretty well-educated and sensible. Give us the facts and we can put things together for ourselves, but give us real facts, not “frames,” “memes” or “narratives.” Give us real background, not carefully plucked and edited pieces of history. If there must be analysis (and most times there really needn’t be) take it beyond all the favorite cocktail-party talking-heads spewing the same narrow (and stultifyingly predictable) view. Really, is Doris Kearns Goodwin ever going to say anything that surprises anyone? Is Russert? Is David Gergen? Is Andrea Mitchell? It’s all so tired and none of them stray from the script - they even use the same words, trying desperately to convince us that things need “gravitas” that things are a “quagmire” that things are “paradigms” that things are “archtypes” or whatever the new word for the week is, every stinking week - they can’t all be thinking the same damn thing, all the time, can they? I know they’re 90% liberal Democrats but that doesn’t mean they have moved beyond critical thinking and now simply (to quote Hillary) “fall in line,” does it?

If Couric wants to get us buzzing her way (a smart woman would) she might consider departing from the “blogs bad, heap-big-journalists good” narrative and simply look at reality: big media is routinely omitting info, framing, spinning, printing bad photos and promoting bad documentation, while ignoring other important documents. If Couric really has guts, and really wants to do something constructive, she ought to address the fact that the blogs are catching the MSM failing hugely, in ways that affect her own credibility. Perhaps she can get the MSM to engage in a bit of introspection - something beyond mourning their “failure to ask Bush questions abour Iraq” (which is totally bogus - they did nothing BUT) and even perhaps wondering what this sort of inaccurate reportage is really about.

Will Katie be able to address it, address their failures to ever ask John Kerry or Hillary Clinton anything substantial? Can she address this legitimate question, or the fact that maybe the NY Times shouldn’t be telling national secrets, just now? She’d be brave, crazy and smart to talk about where the press is really, truly failing in terms of ethics and honesty. She might admit that the press strains its credibility by, never reporting a positive for Bush (as with the economic news of the past three years) without inserting a large and negative “BUT,” and by getting gleeful whenever it can report things going badly.

The press is supposed to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” well, let’s see if Couric is capable of “afflicting” a Kerry, Clinton or Kennedy. That would be stunning. It would be…miraculous.

Ever since Broadcast News, I’ve suspected that the press knows we cannot abide the sight of Diane Sawyer or Mitchell or that deplorable, bobble-headed Stone Philips leaning forward, chin in hand, gravely asking some half-leading question (or pimping a mournful or skeptical “reaction”) of an interviewee. We don’t need to see the reporter’s body language or raised eyebrow - that’s simply throwing non-verbal cues at the audience. Maybe Couric - as managing editor - will put that hideous practice out to pasture. That would be a good thing. I bet no one told her that on her “listening” tour.

For the country’s sake, I’d love for Katie Couric to surprise all of us and be a real news anchor giving hell to both sides of the political spectrum (what a concept!), and respecting the intelligence of the American people enough to not engage in the advocacy journalism that has seduced so many reporters. I recall Couric, herself, carrying on about the superiority of France’s 35 hour workweek (hello, how’s their economy, Katie) and about the wonderfulness that is Castro’s Cuba, but you know…I don’t want to hear that from her, and I’m betting most Americans do not want to hear about how great every other country is, and how awful America is (until, of course, someone with a D after the name gets into the WH, at which time we’ll become a fairly respectable country, once more). We needn’t get flag-waving, but must we constantly have our national face shoved into the mud?

I just want to be told what is going on - without passion or prejudice. If Katie Couric can pull it off, no one will be more grateful (or quicker to praise her) than I. I believe that’s how most sane voices in the hated, “gatekeeperless blogosphere” feel. She has the opportunity to do something remarkable, here - something that could actually rebuild trust and dismantle some of the fences and walls that are polarizing our nation and destroying it.

Opportunity either challenges us to our better selves or reveals our most glaring weaknesses. Against all evidence, against all instinct and my own haughty-blogger nature, I’m really hoping that Katie Couric will deliver the legitimate news to us, and deliver the news industry from itself.

Related: Reuters Jumps the Shark.

Boston Globe Appears to Misrepresent Soldier.

Siggy, who is way too generous to me (I expect he’s just glad I’m writing anything) considers all the above and thinks I’m going to be disappointed in my hopes. He writes - among other things: Couric wants to be perceived as coming from the ranks of news consumers, as opposed to coming from the ranks of highly paid TV personalities. and he wonders, Will Katie Couric become a kind of Adnan Hajj, manipulating what we see and hear?
. You’ll want to read all his thoughts.