There were once television news people like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley — anchors whom you could actually believe. If they told you the sky was falling, you’d sure as hell get yourself ready for the end of the world. If they told you everything was going to be okay, you slept soundly that night.
More recently, I was a Tom Brokaw groupie, and since Brian Williams took over for him at NBC, I’ve been more inclined to seek a network with fewer peacocks, as its logo promises. The void left at ABC by the death of Peter Jennings remains unfilled, even with two co-anchors there. As far as the CBS Evening News, some of us could never get used to Dan Rather. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if he was a newsman or a mystic.
CBS Evening News has enjoyed a recent ratings bump since, in part, it had the good sense to assign Bob Schieffer to anchor weeknights, after Rather’s sudden departure under a credibility cloud. Schieffer is an old-time newsman with 30 years of experience in the nation’s capital. His newscasts are no-nonsense, no-frills, just-plain-news experiences. There is no danger that a viewer will switch on during Schieffer’s tenure and get a lead story about Britney Spears’s latest body-piercing experience.
There is also no chance that Schieffer is going to greet us wearing a fake rubber nose and mustache, all attached to phony eyeglasses. We have, on the other hand, seen Katie Couric, the new CBS anchor-in-waiting, with Teletubby antennae on her head. It didn’t make me feel she was a better news reporter than someone like Bob Schieffer.
Although Schieffer and Couric have won Emmys and other awards, Couric’s Woman of the Year prize from Glamour magazine pales against Schieffer’s Broadcaster of the Year nod from the National Press Foundation, and his Helen Thomas Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 2003, the Radio-Television News Directors’ Association recognized Schieffer for his lifetime of achievement, as it had Edward R. Murrow, another real news icon.
People need real news. With Couric at CBS, it doesn’t look as if we’ll be getting more of that. Meanwhile, at ABC co-anchors Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff don’t offer much hope, either, as Woodruff recovers from injuries suffered while covering Iraq, and Vargas gets ready to vacate her chair for maternity leave. At NBC, Brian Williams, try though he might, will never be Tom Brokaw.
I’ve twice met Katie Couric, and I like her. I think she is intelligent. News giants, however, have to come from a place where their depth, credibility, and fairness are rock solid. And Couric’s many years on the Today show, kissing chimps, sparring with rock stars, and having an on-air colonoscopy, are unlikely to make her more believable if she tells us the sky is falling.
