The news leaked out Monday that Katie Couric is stepping down from
her failed experiment as the anchor of the "CBS Evening News." People
inside the news business greeted the news as shocking. But what's
shocking is that Couric didn't get the boot years ago. CBS's ratings
cratered while she earned $15 million annually.
Couric was once
projected as the Great White Female Hope after Dan Rather's involuntary
retirement in 2005. His numbers in his last week had dropped to a last
place 8.1 million nightly audience. But what did Couric deliver?
The
end may have looked near at the end of March, when CBS saw its
lowest-rated first quarter among both total viewers and the prized
25-to-54 demographic since at least 1992 - as far back as Nielsen's
breakdowns for the show go. Couric was averaging only 6.4 million total
viewers (and less than 2 million among viewers 25 to 54). That was way
behind NBC at 9.8 million and ABC at 8.65 million.
On NPR,
evening anchor Michele Norris mourned that "when you reach back to the
era of Rather and Jennings and Brokaw, it seemed like getting an anchor
job in the past was much like a lifetime appointment, much like a
Supreme Court justice." Media reporter David Folkenflik answered that
"holding one of these jobs is no longer being one of the highest
priests of journalism because the notion of authoritativeness has been
undermined. Even the New York Times does not command, in some ways, as
absolute a voice about what is news and what isn't any more."
It
is refreshing that Americans today reject the notion that we should bow
before the network TV anchormen as the most hallowed of political
actors, let alone "priests of journalism." In the post-Vietnam,
post-Watergate period, the media asserted themselves as a fourth branch
of government, abiding by left-wing urgings to resist being
"stenographers to power." So they struck their self-righteous blows
against "risky" tax cuts and "foolish" wars and asserted their courage
in refusing to wear flag pins.
Now they're surprised that more than half the audience has rejected them. So much for the high priests of authoritativeness.
The
media elite's rhetoric about rejecting the "stenographers to power"
label sounds most ridiculous when facing one of their heroes. There was
perky Katie, grinning and bowing before President Obama on July 22,
2009. "You're so confident, Mr. President, and so focused," she
blushed. "Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say,
'Damn, this is hard. Damn, I'm not going to get the things done I want
to get done, and it's just too politicized to really get accomplished
the big things I want to accomplish'?"
She also raved over the
Obamas when she wasn't on the White House lawn. In September of that
year, Couric joined many in expecting an Obama victory before the
International Olympic Committee. "The Dream Team pushing Chicago's bid
for the 2016 Olympic summer games is nearly complete," Couric cooed.
"First Lady Michelle Obama landed today in Denmark where Olympic
officials are meeting....The team captain, meanwhile, President Obama,
arrives Friday ahead of the final vote."
Couric didn't fail at
this job or lack authority because she was the first female nightly
news anchor. She lacked authority because she was such a blatant
feminist and liberal activist. In her first weeks at CBS, she set the
tone by attacking Rush Limbaugh as "certainly heartless" in mocking
Michael J. Fox's ads for Democrats. She supportively interviewed Fox
for eight minutes on his crusade for embryo-killing stem cell research
- just as she had repeatedly loaned her celebrity to the movie star's
foundation fundraisers.
Journalists hailed Couric for her
pounding on Sarah Palin in 2008. As Folkenflik at NPR put it, she
"earned praise" for how "her steady questioning style allowed Palin to
reveal herself as uncertain, at times, of her bearing on policy
issues," which earned Couric "a bevy of awards." But others saw it
differently. She never, ever treated a Democrat this way.
Just
days before, she hailed Joe Biden on the campaign trail. "He's the
close-talking, free-wheeling, ice-cream eating Democratic nominee for
Vice President." His weakness for gaffes became a strength. "You say
what's on your mind and I think people appreciate that," she told
Biden. "Have you found that you have to be uber-careful and disciplined
in terms of being out on the campaign trail?"
No one imagines
that Katie Couric's replacement of CBS means less liberalism. The
leading candidate to replace her is Scott Pelley, who's been tougher on
people he's compared to Holocaust deniers - global warming skeptics -
than actual Holocaust deniers, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he
asserted was "genuinely religious, genuinely humble" and "said to be
absolutely incorruptible as well." The meltdown at CBS will continue.
