"...the atmosphere around Couric has turned poisonous."

[UTUSN]

*******QUOTE*******

http://nationaljournal.com/powers.htm

OFF MESSAGE
Trading Places

By William Powers, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, March 30, 2007

.... ...the atmosphere around Couric has turned poisonous. For a while, as her ratings surfed the bottom, she enjoyed some free-floating sympathy. But now the tone has shifted into the kind of popular animus normally reserved for corrupt public officials.

The Couric situation has become one big hypocrisy watch. Phoniness, remember, is a central motif of the campaign beat. Is Obama too good to be true? Does Giuliani have secret demons? Going into the Edwards interview, the candidate himself was on the watch list. Perhaps the devoted family man was really just a career-mad monster, a Svengali who would pursue the presidency at any cost to his loved ones.

But both Edwardses came off as utterly real and admirable, while Couric seemed the hypocrite in two ways: 1) Style. The hard-guy Mike Wallace shtick just isn't her, and 2) Substance. After her husband was diagnosed with cancer in the 1990s, Couric gamely forged on with her career. In short, she had been exactly where the Edwardses are now. This highly relevant fact was on every alert viewer's mind, yet she didn't even allude to it. Thus, as Paul Brownfield wrote in the Los Angeles Times, her effort "collapsed under the weight of the interview's essential lie."

What next? A finger-wagging denial? "Mistakes were made"? Stay tuned. Our long national nightmare continues.

********UNQUOTE*******

[skooooo]

1. Boy no one could have predicted this!

:sarcasm:

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Twilight of the Neoclowns.

What is funny to watch is the all the pathetic toadies clinging to the tail of the great neoclown ship of state as it grounds itself in the surf. They thought they had it all figured out and now they aren't even sure what game it is, what the rules are, or who is winning.

[Buzz Clik]

8. I missed something. Couric is an empty shell, but a neocon?

So confusing -- the neocons claim that all tv news but Fox is liberal, and the left claims that all television is a rightwing mouthpiece.

It all starts sounding like paranoid bullshit after a while.

[Jonathan50]

10. The technique is known as "poisoning the well"..

The right has been screaming about "liberal media" for a long time while secretly taking over the media.

[fooj]

42. AKA...PROJECTION.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. She has been carrying their water for quite a while.

"So confusing -- the neocons claim that all tv news but Fox is liberal, and the left claims that all television is a rightwing mouthpiece."

Ok, so you go watch some tv news. Take your pick, cbs, abc, nbc, cnn, fox msnbc. Take notes. Try to be objective. Get back to me on which direction the bias is.

Fox is so absurdly biased that they make other outlets look partially reasonable.

As part of the fascist-lite coup, the assault on the independence of the media was accompanied by the deflecting 'liberal media bias' nonsense campaign. There is no liberal media bias and there hasn't been one for decades, if ever.


Here, these folks have done some pretty damn good research already on this issue: http://www.fair.org

[Buzz Clik]

13. Oh. It's a conspiracy. It get it.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Ah another lead-headed coincidence theorist.

Right. Got it. Nothing to see here. Pay no attention. Move along.

Nothing odd happened to Dan Rather. Kerry didn't get swiftboated by the compliant MSM. Dean didn't scream 24/7. We didn't get lied into war with the active complicity of every single major media outlet. Nothing odd about 9-11. Gore didn't sigh too much. The media certainly wasn't complicit in the eight year effort to derail the Clinton presidency. Nah, we are all just a bunch of nut cases.

[Buzz Clik]

24. There's plenty of real problems with real origins to worry about.

You'll simply have to forgive me if I can't buy the theory that the Rupert Murdochs of the world are directing the hiring at every media outlet and writing their scripts.

This silliness would be easier to take if I hadn't heard the laughable claim that, along with every other media outlet, NPR is a GOP mouthpiece.

Sorry, but I just don't look good in tinfoil.

[Warren Stupidity]

26. Try reading "manufacturing consent".

The argument that an active overt conspiracy ("the Rupert Murdochs of the world are directing the hiring at every media outlet and writing their scripts") is required was dispensed with quite a while ago by professor chomsky.

What I am amazed at is the ability of many here to deny the obvious, to chant 'tinfoil tinfoil' whenever the uncomfortable nature of reality is brought to their attention.

[Buzz Clik]

37. Reality?

I am quite a follower of Noam Chomsky, and I don't recall him ever saying that all the media is a collective mouthpiece for the GOP -- god knows Katie Couric. For Chomsky, the insidious US policies have no leaning to the left or right; he was equally with Clinton's foreign policy as he is with Bush.

[fooj]

43. Willful ignorance.

If you don't believe that the media (as a whole) has become a collective mouthpiece for the GOP then you just aren't paying attention. Period. It's that simple. No tinfoil necessary.

[Buzz Clik]

44. And here come the insults.

So be it.

Take your conspiracies back to the basement where you play with them without anyone watching.

[fooj]

45. Actually, not insults. Facts.

This ISN'T a conspiracy...

Time To Admit Oversight?

COLD BUSTED Time

Is Time trying to bury the attorney general scandal that's seized Washington, D.C., for the past three months? In just the last week, new documents emerged contradicting Alberto Gonzales's account of his role in the firings, a low-level Department of Justice staffer announced her intent to plead the Fifth if asked to testify before Congress, and Justice officials admitted that it had misled Congress when it denied last month that Karl Rove played a role in deciding which U.S. attorneys got the boot. Yet the new issue of Time, on stands today, contains precisely zero stories on the scandal. Nothing. As though it's not happening.
You could chalk it up to atrocious news judgment, or laziness perhaps, but then there's the bizarre hostility that Time's editors have expressed regarding coverage of the firings. Back in January, Washington bureau chief Jay Carney dismissed them as run-of-the-mill "partisan hackery" and suggested that Josh Marshall, the proprietor of Talking Points Memo, was peddling conspiracy theories in pushing the story.

And just last weekend, Time's tight-faced managing editor, Richard Stengel, bemoaned the Democrats' insistence on investigating the firings on The Chris Matthews Show: "I am so uninterested in the Democrats wanting Karl Rove, because it is so bad for them. Because it shows business as usual, tit for tat, vengeance. That's not what voters want to see.... It's small-bore politics."

Both comments have generated heated reaction from left-wing blogs; Carney was forced to eat crow on Time's political blog (which he did graciously), Time's Ana Marie Cox fearlessly (foolishly?) took her boss Stengel to task, and Salon's Glenn Greenwald produced recent polls demonstrating that no less than 72 percent of the public is more interested than Stengel in the ongoing congressional investigations into the Justice Department.
<snip>

Just ONE of many examples. This "victim" stuff doesn't work with me. I don't insult people for their beliefs and attitudes. However, when someone WILLFULLY ignores massive amounts of factual proof...I don't hesitate to call them on it. For goodness sake, you've been around here long enough to know that MANY HUGE stories don't see the light of day. Either you accept that as reality or you aren't paying attention.

YOU are the one hurling the INSULTS.

Take your conspiracies back to the basement where you play with them without anyone watching.

PROJECTIONS, anyone?

[Buzz Clik]

46. Oh, my. You've convinced me.

:eyes:

[fooj]

47. Why bother.

You have already CONVINCED yourself. Nothing to see here...

The media shows NO bias whatsoever. Whatever. You are welcome to your opinion. See? No need to hurl insults. You have the right to believe what you believe. You could sit on a stack of DOCUMENTED proof and it wouldn't matter. You have made up your mind. Fine. Groovy.

Have a nice day!B-)

[Jim Sagle]

59. The media are RNC Central, and everybody goddamn well knows it.

[Jonathan50]

31. NPR has been under attack for quite a few years now by the GOP

We've had six years of one party rule on the right, if NPR were not to adjust their programming to satisfy the GOP then their public funding would probably have been cut entirely.

As the Attorney General scandal shows, the GOP politicizes *everything* they touch, why not NPR too?

[Buzz Clik]

38. Interesting.

We've had six years of one party rule on the right, if NPR were not to adjust their programming to satisfy the GOP then their public funding would probably have been cut entirely.

Without question. Gingrich was not shy about his intentions to cut NPR and literally move Rush Limbaugh onto Capitol Hill. And, yes, they toned down their clearly left-leaning bias in response. BUT, they didn't suddenly become Fox News -- they simply left much of their idealism unstated.

As the Attorney General scandal shows, the GOP politicizes *everything* they touch, why not NPR too?

Why not, indeed. Fortunately, NPR is not run in any sense by any administration.

[Morgana LaFey]

55. "Not run by any administration" doesn't mean not INFLUENCED

by this one.

[sendero]

52. NPR..

... has IN FACT adjusted their programming. They are only marginally better than the rest of them.

[sendero]

51. If you don't realize...

... that at the bottom of this entire mess is a media that trashed Gore relentlessly and gave a lying, can't say one sentence without tripping over his dingus moron a free pass, then you are suffering a serious intelligence deficit or you are one of them.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

54. The post 9-11 NPR is light years from its roots. They DID question the jump to the Iraq war,

but, then even NPR began to calmly discuss whether the administration and the troops were ready to manage the "peace".

This about three or four months before we attacked them.

MKJ

[gulfcoastliberal]

58. check mediamatters.com for many examples of RW media bias

you may be surprised.

[entanglement]

18. A good measure of RW bias is the number and affiliation of the guests and 'experts'

Watch MSNBC, CNN, FOX - and you'll see that the 'experts' are overwhelmingly from right-wing think tanks / organizations like AEI / Heritage, cronies of the administration, or at best, right-leaning democrats. Progressive / left-wing voices are rarely heard, if ever.

[tanyev]

20. Navy Seals rock!

Katie may not be in the same league as Official Neo-con Stenographer Judy Miller, but we saw after 9/11 that many news personalities thought it was their job to be national cheerleaders. I always thought their job was to search for facts and report the truth.

[DeepBlueC]

49. ooh, neoclown ... I love it!

[Atman]

3. And another "star" burns out after getting sucked into the BushCo black hole

When will these people learn? The Bush Family (caps intended) is a karmic black hole. Get anywhere close to them and you'll be sucked in and snuffed out. Nothing good ever comes to anyone who aligns themselves with these people.

.

[blm]

23. Exactly - Almost every former news star has been coopted to suck up to BushInc.

And they wonder why their stars stopped shining as their bank accounts grew.

Feh....they don't really care. Their mortgages are paid.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. It surprised me that she didn't offer one iota of empathy

in that interview. The choice shots of her expressions showed a woman who was either jealous or envious (I couldn't decide which). But, the questions to Edwards "Tell what it felt like when you found out" were rediculous!

I fully would have expected her to ask it more in the way of, "I know when my husband was diagnosed, I was devastated (or in shock, or ...something!). Tell us some of the things that went through your mind." IMO, she would have been better off than with the horrible performance of a 'hard interviewer'. She completely fell on her face.

The recent attempts by the network to put her out on the PR circuit are going to fail for one simple, single reason: Katie Couric herself.

[Poiuyt]

17. "Tell what it felt like when you found out"

My mother was a reporter for newspaper and radio back in the 50's. She was covering a house fire and asked the owner how he felt. "HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK I FEEL?" She said she learned very quickly never to ask stupid questions.

[Danascot]

27. This is the quintessential tabloid news question

"Tell our viewers exactly what it felt like when you got out of your car and saw that you'd crushed your two year old child."

When you hear a question start with "Tell us how you feel" you know you're about to get slimed.

I haven't been able to watch local news for years and usually feel like I need a shower when I make the mistake of watching national news.

[blondeatlast]

19. Is she a detached journalist or an entertainer? She wants to be both--but she can't anymore.

The problem for her is, on the Today show, she became an entertainer, period--and that schtick stays with her and she seems unable or unwilling to let it go. Not to mention that CBS hired her to be an entertainer delivering hard news.

She's simply awful and just like in DC now, we are seeing the power elite unwilling to acknowledge that an enormous mistake was made. It's almost amusing in the Couric/CBS mess--but it also gives us a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the power hungry minds of those in control of the nation and the media.

Most of us are willing to admit we screwed up big time and move on. But those for whom the goal is power for it's own sake simply can't do that--and that makes for a scary, bizarre situation indeed.

[Clark2008]

53. Why did you expect that?

Journalists should interject themselves into the story.

I have yet to figure this out about DU. Could Katie be tougher on Republicans? Sure. But that doesn't mean she should be all empathetic toward the Edwards' either.

Her personal life shouldn't factor into her questioning. That's why there is so much bad reporting these days.

[AndyA]

5. You know, I'm no hot shot $4.5 million a year network executive,

but even I could have told them Couric was a bad, bad move before it happened. She is a train wreck barreling into the station at 100 mph with no brakes. Anyone could have/should have seen that.

Katie Couric has always been a right wing harpy of little substance, with mediocre interviewing skills, if that. She's always been more fluff than anything, best suited to an Entertainment Tonight type show instead of real news.

She has an unpleasant, somewhat nasaly tone to her voice, that grates on people's nerves. She is as transparent as can be, and it's a real shame that she's occupying the chair that Walter Cronkite once occupied so well. Katie hasn't even managed to hold on to the viewers her predecessor had, and while CBS was still in third place, they were slowly gaining viewers.

As a news organization, CBS News has lost a lot of credibility by hiring Katie Couric. They would do well to send her packing and find someone else for the Evening News. I'm certain they have eligible people within their organization right now. Harry Smith, for one.

[ginnyinWI]

7. I wrote to CBS last summer when they announced her

as their new anchor. Can't watch her; don't trust a word she says.

[bmbmd]

22. I watch her all the time

because the train barrelling into the station metaphor is accurate. Can't wait to see what bonehead stunt she pulls next, and am unable to look away from the impending horror.

[Javaman]

6. like the neo-con water carrying ass she is, she will state, regardless of the question...

that she doesn't remember.

[partylessinOhio]

9. KC is a setback for women.

[madinmaryland]

11. All of her credibility was blown when she had limbaugh

on one of her first telecasts. That assumes there was any credibility before that.

[Beausoir]

14. Yep. That one move was so revolting I vowed never to watch her.

[madinmaryland]

25. I didn't have any real desire to see her initially, but that totally

killed any interest I might have had to watch her.

[madrchsod]

16. when she was hired they

made the decision to put the oldest male cbs journalist with her in case there was a story that was to important or serious. they were afraid that she would come off looking...well we now know what they were afraid of.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

21. I'm Just A CPA Who Makes Under $100K/Yr.

I realize I'm not some high paid executive, at one of the largest U.S. companies in CBS, Inc., and I imagine there are few 7 figure DU posters here, so I don't think we qualify to judge whether CBS should have hired Ms. Couric. I mean, really....television programming is not our forte. We're not intelligent enough to determine how wise it would be to pay $15 Million+/yr. in a long term deal, to the superstar Katie.

A company like CBS would NEVER hire any of us for their programming decisions, because they have much more qualified people for those positions, and clearly we would not have a clue as to what we were doing.

:sarcasm:

[underpants]

41. I only have an accounting degree

I never got my CPA and I don't make 7 figures but I have watched a whole lot of television and I know what works and what doesn't. I also know that CBS and the other networks have a executive branch so deep that they could lose half of them and their families would hardly notice. "Executive VP of late night programming" What the hell is that? You need more than one person to lead the ship for that 2 hours?

Anyway it would seem to me that since the conventional wisdom is that only old people (CBS's main draw I think-TV's left on) and conservatives watch TV news why not try to draw in someone else? Why not create demand for yourself (see ethanol) instead of trying to do yet another copy of the same show that everyone else is already done. Okay it worked for "Friends" ripping off "Seinfeld" but none of the other rip offs have worked. Why not try to either go after the young crowd (probably not interested thank you) or the NONconservative crowd? Oh wait what am I saying the power elites use the news to keep information FROM the American public this profit and loss talk is pure cover.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

28. I have NOT watched Katie in her new job.

Not one second. Not one miniscule glimpse. Don't plan to anytime soon, unless she interviews the Dalai Llama ("Those are really cute shoes you're wearing, Dalai! Who does your hair?")

[Straight Shooter]

29. LOL! I posted after the Edwards debacle that her name should be Katie Curare. n/t

[mikeytherat]

30. I do not watch CBS News, but EVERY single ad I have seen for it was a joke!

Every ad, describing what Katie would be talking about that night, was absolute fluff: a couple married 60 years, how exercise can help you, how certain foods can be bad for you, etc. - things that would be considered fluff on a local news station.

mikey_the_rat

[Morgana LaFey]

56. Yeah, the evening news recast as Today Show blather

It's pretty disgusting. What America does NOT need more of is the entertainmentization of our news.

[Stevepol]

32. I think Bob Schieffer would have been a great anchor, was doing very well.

Couric isn't a right winger. She's just not the right one for this kd of job. She keeps thinking she has to adopt a certain persona to be non-partisan I guess, and she ends up going too far to the right to defend herself against her right wing critics.

I think CBS was trying to soften its image after Rather's high-pressure atmosphere, but Schieffer has a softer side as well and wd have been a nice compromise. He's also a good reporter and honest I think, cut in the Rather mold.

I can't understand what could have possessed CBS to turn the evening news over to Couric. Here you have the worst, most divisive administration in history, trying to keep fighting an illegal and immoral war that 70% or more of the American people are against and over 50% of Americans are enraged about, you've got the complete loss of democracy due to electronic voting machines, the most corrupt era in American history, etc. etc. and what does CBS do? They put Couric in as anchor so we can feel better about ourselves and hear her talk about health food and exercise and living longer on tofu?

Is it any wonder that Olbermann's viewing audience keeps growing?

If CBS hired Olbermann, their problems would be over Man!

[shadowknows69]

33. Buh Bye Katie

CBS should just close up the news shop after this fiasco.

[spanone]

34. Katie is a great contributor to the dumbing down of America.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

35. long national nightmare?

doesn't William Powers have a remote control? Don't like Katie? Turn the channel. CBS will figure out their mistake soon enough.

[Marie26]

36. Being back Bob Schieffer! nt

[originalpckelly]

39. Are you trying to say that Katie let one?

[natrat]

40. she and matt lauer are gross

with 75% of the country realizing the bushco scam they probably want reporters that ask questions not help cover lies

[mykpart]

48. Maybe Katie can get a job on The View,

replacing Star Jones.

[Morgana LaFey]

57. No, no. The View is Just Fine now, thanks to Rosie O'Donnell.

Katie Couric would make it something I couldn't watch again, as I couldn't watch it before Rosie.

[senseandsensibility]

50. She IS a phony

and an air-head and a rightwing shill. It's amazing how obvious this has been for years, yet even some DU defend her. Didn't anyone watch her interview with Kerry during the last campaign? It was just as shrill and disgusting. Contrasted with her kid glove handling of Condi and others, her bias couldn't be more apparent.