Couric’s Feet in Cronkite’s Shoes?

The saga of NBC’s morning personality, Katie Couric, leaving to anchor the “CBS Evening News” has entered its penultimate act. On Wednesday with mascara running from her right eye, she said “after listening to my heart and my gut . . . I’ve decided I’ll be leaving ‘Today’ at the end of May.” Ann Curry said to her on camera, “It feels like my sister is going off to college,” fighting off the tears. As theatre, it was cheesy and melodramatic, but can she fill the seat Walter Cronkite held? Can anyone?

In a word, “No.’ Katie Couric isn’t the same kind of journalist as Mr. Cronkite, and that is largely because the info-tainment business has replaced the news business in America. There are still broadcast journalists working their patch; Anderson Cooper’s righteous indignation broadcasting from flooded New Orleans in September is a decent example. However, he works for CNN, not one of the major networks. Network news is now a profit center (or cost center) rather than a public service.

There was a time in America when the evening news came on at 7pm on the east coast, at an hour when commuters in the Boston-Washington corridor could get home to see it. The tradition began in the 1950s, when the broadcast was just 15 minutes long – which is adequate if one doesn’t have commercial breaks or a feature piece on a tortilla with the Virgin Mary’s face on it. The country got most of its news from print sources, and the TV journalists had print backgrounds. That meant they knew how to report a story, but more importantly, they had a sense of what was news as opposed to gossip.

Fifty years ago, there simply was no TV celebrity; it developed, quite logically, as TV developed. And now, there is more filler on the nightly news that anything else, and reporters go through more hairspray than shoe leather. Ratings matter more than informing the public, and that means “feel good” pieces abound. Anything controversial is toxic because advertisers don’t want people upset. As David Brinkley said shortly before his death, a guy with his looks wouldn’t make it these days. Ms. Couric has been labeled the “Queen of Fluff,” with her blond hair and girl-next-door cuteness working against her journalistic talents, perhaps unfairly.

Only time will tell if she’s up to the job. The first natural disaster or crisis that happens while she’s at the anchor desk will be the litmus test. During Apollo XI’s moon landing, Mr. Cronkite was on the air for 27 of the 30 hours the astronauts were on the lunar surface. The moment he removed his glasses to tell the nation JFK had died was iconic because it carried such seriousness in such a simple gesture. The late Peter Jennings’s work on September 11, 2001 is a textbook example of how good TV journalism can be. Erik Sorenson, a former CBS producer, said of Ms. Couric: “A lot of her considerable talents don’t translate to the evening news. You cannot sing a cabaret number. They won’t have her ski. They won’t have her dance.” One is grateful for such small mercies.

All the same, the one definitely good thing to come out of all of this is the audience that might follow Ms. Couric to watch the evening news, especially people who don’t watch it at all currently. An informed public is the basis of a free society, and if she gets a few thousand people to pay attention who didn’t before she took over at CBS, then it’s a win for all concerned. The real shame is so much at CBS News seems to be riding on her shoulders.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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