Katie Couric, CBS Anchor? It's Like Night And 'Today'

So says Tom Shales at The Washington (Com)Post. We have here the first speculation on the idea of a CBS Evening News with Katie Couric from the liberal side.

And what a speculation this is. Of course, Shales' accumulated anti-conservative bile shows quite prominently. For example:

It's common knowledge that Bush was a spoiled little rich boy who did not serve with any great distinction, so [the] story [of the Killian Memoranda] wasn't exactly a blockbuster. It was more a matter of new details.

Sorry, Tom, but such was not "common knowledge" outside of the narrow and shrinking world that you and your fellow style scribblers inhabit. If you want to know why Bush didn't get to go to Vietnam, you have only Walter Cronkite to blame for that--Walter Cronkite who deliberately mis-portrayed the Tet Offensive as a US military defeat when in fact it was a victory.

That aside, Mr. Shales reveals--if his own sources are correct--that Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS, is going after the new division and will turn it into something that even I, news junkie that I have been since I was a kid, won't recognize. Actually, Shales has nothing but rumors--but what's remarkable here is that more people are bating their breath inside and outside CBS News than I have ever seen before in the wake of a major media embarrassment. Here's more:

CBS News staffers are puzzled, if not furious, over Moonves's rumored plans to remodel the "Evening News" completely when Rather leaves and turn it into a nighttime version of the morning shows -- replete, perhaps, with comedy capers, jokes and satire, maybe some showbiz gossip and someone like Couric as a very "viewer-friendly" host who appeals to the young-adult demographic that generally doesn't watch the news.

And on and on it goes, all adding up to speculation that Moonves plans to turn the Evening News into the Evening Show. In that sense, hiring Katie Couric would be a good fit, because she would in essence be running the Today show at night instead of in the morning.

In his next paragraph, Shales says that "Moonves is also despised by some insiders for what he hasn't done"--meaning his not defending Dan Rather. Speak for yourself, Tom--although if some CBS News insiders really do think that Dan Rather deserved being defended after what he did, I don't suppose that I should be surprised. But what would you expect Mr. Moonves to do? What would you expect of any boss whose chief public face brought discredit--not to mention criminal liability--on the company? I don't care how many years Dan Rather has with CBS. I'll throw Al Gore's words right at you: Dan Rather betrayed that company! He played on their prejudices! (And furthermore, Mr. Shales, you disappoint me when you repeat that crazy line from the Memogate Report saying that Dan Rather just read the script that someone else wrote for him. I don't believe that for one picosecond--and neither must Leslie Moonves, if he eased Dan Rather out of the outfit earlier than he had actually planned to retire.)

Prejudice in journalism is the root of all kinds of journalistic evil, if I may paraphrase Holy Scripture here. It leads producers to promulgate documents that they ought to know are false, and it leads people to spit and hiss, "We s-s-stand by our s-s-story!" when those who have the moxie for it, catch them out in a lie. And it leads style scribblers to compromise what might otherwise be valuable observations and predictions of what is likely to happen next, by confusing their own opinions with those of the people they are supposed to be reporting on. None of this is very pleasant to watch or read. (And we shall see, won't we, what Nielsen and Arbitron has to say about which TV and radio stations had the biggest audiences for today's Inaugural events.)