No News Not the Best News For Katie Couric's Debut

[rodeodance]

I had dubbed it a human interest story. I watched it last night just to see how it would go. No hard news was my comment last night.



No News Not the Best News For Katie Couric's Debut

By Tom Shales
Wednesday, September 6, 2006; Page C01

Atitle change would seem to be in order. Maybe "The CBS Evening No-News." Or "The CBS Evening Magazine." Or "30 Minutes."

Whatever it was, Katie Couric did a brisk, engaging job of getting the strange new show off the ground last night as, at long last -- and after one of the most relentless hype hurricanes in history -- she debuted as the first woman to be solo anchor of a major network newscast. K-Day had come at last!




Couric occupied a chair that once belonged to Walter Cronkite and, later, Dan Rather, both of whom did newscasts that were much, much newsier. Yesterday, though, was apparently a no-news day in the opinion of Executive Producer Rome Hartman, the staff and Couric herself, since the half-hour began with a "60 Minutes"-style piece on the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The real purpose of this report was to show off Lara Logan, the intensely telegenic reporter who serves as foreign correspondent. She went undercover in Afghanistan, much as Rather had done many many years ago. But as a woman, Logan said, her Taliban hosts "insisted I cover everything but my eyes."

The story was in fact largely about her -- about how dangerous it was to do the story, about what a big, "unprecedented" exclusive it was (Brian Ross seemed to have much the same story on ABC's "World News Tonight" with Charles Gibson) and how she had to tippy-toe away from the camp through a minefield, led by a guide........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501473.html

[liberal N proud]

1. No hard news is what can be expected from the media whore

[jus_the_facts]

2. It's meant as entertainment..dumb down instead of enlighten....

.....that's all the media has ever been really...a tool for propaganda..to control the mind into taking sides on everything in the past..now it's total manipulation 24/7 keeping people scatterbrained and divided...without REALLY understanding anything as we're all on a different page without the ability anymore to decipher what's really real or not. :nopity:

[AlinPA]

4. Exactly. I won't add more, you nailed it. nt

[jus_the_facts]

5. Thank You!

:hi:

[madame defarge]

3. Maybe they're working on...

another LIHOP/MIHOP situation so that she "shine" & show her true abilities...a lightweight tv personality with good legs.

Or maybe they'll revamp the news program to be like American Idol...those "regular" people who get to voice their opinion can compete to replace K-K-K-Katie.

[watercolors]

6. Listening to my senior citizen student s this morning

She is not going to make it, they were very critical of the show, I got an earful! They decided it's not a news broadcast, and Katie needs to go back to GMA SHOW. All said they'd rather have Shieffer back or Dan Rather.