Couric Can’t Save Evening News
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in In The News, MediaSo the sprightly Katie Couric is taking the big seat at CBS Evening News. Now people are asking, does she have the gravitas for it? Does she have the skill? Can she muster the sturdy gaze of courage necessary when the news turns bad?
My only question is: does it matter?
The network evening news is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Yes, somewhere around a combined 30 million people still watch the three network’s evening newscasts but, then again, a lot of people still own VCRs too�doesn’t mean there’s a future in it.
The fact is, the evening news has been in a ratings freefall for over two decades and there is absolutely no reason to believe Couric or anyone else can convince us to go back to the good-old-days of serious-voiced oracles rationing out the day’s news in 3-minute bundles. That time has passed. The news is no longer a 30-minute experience. Now it’s a constant, unstoppable stream of stories and opinions available from multiple 24-hour cable news stations and innumerable Internet news sites.
The news can no longer be corralled by three anchors in three big chairs. Yet corralling the news is all the nightly newscasts are good for. “Here’s what you should know for today,� they say and sometimes even add “and here’s what you should think about it.� That worked when they were the gatekeepers. But the gates have been smashed, obliterated and all the anchors are left to do is hold up splintered remnants of what was and pretend they are showing us “the news.�
Not surprisingly, this development horrifies some of the old masters of the form. The great Walter Cronkite, in an interview last year, said of the decline in traditional news sources:
The fact that readership of newspapers is down and the viewing of news on television is down – in the network form, that is – with that, we should consider that democracy is in danger,” he said. “As old Thomas Jefferson said, the nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never will and never can be. The problem we’ve got with newspapers and television today, television news, is, I think, the fact that the public is too ignorant to understand the important news of the day. It wants to be entertained rather than informed
There you have it. The problem isn’t obsolescence of the form. The problem is that we the people are too ignorant to see the importance in what the network evening news deems important. The blind egotism of that statement is staggering and while Cronkite does not represent those running the three network evening newscasts, can we really doubt that his opinions are still quite prevalent among producers and anchors?
I really don’t think there is a way to save the network evening news. But if they want a fighting chance, the first step is realizing they are but a small piece of the modern news environment. They cannot be the gatekeepers, the opinion-makers. They have to be satisfied with being something less. Maybe by reducing their expectations they can improve their appeal. Maybe.
But my gut tells me Ms. Couric has just stepped aboard a slowly but unstoppably sinking ship.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 and is filed under In The News, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:34 am
This may be a little off the subject, but it has been very disappointing that people have chosen to focus on the question of whether this delicate woman can make it as a news anchor. What is this, the 50’s? I have been listening to all of this commentary in a somewhat dumbfounded state. Very disappointed. Maybe I’m just a delicate and naive woman myself.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I haven’t watched an evening newscast in years precisely because it’s too much entertainment and too little news. That’s why I have to say that Cronkite is right. People don’t want news, they want entertainment. And they’re getting it, thanks to Messers. O’Reilly, Matthews, Hannity, and King, as well as from the internet.
Those fimly ensconsed in the blog world tend to understate the problems of that world. Where you see the makers of freedom for news, I see an excessive number of partisan hacks sniping at each other and being read by people who already want to believe whatever it is that those hacks say.
The success of a republic depends on the electorate being informed. Overall, blogs and cable “news” channels are not informing people well. They’re telling them what they want to hear and pretending that they’re the real source of news. How is this different from what you claim of the evening news? It’s worse, becase there’s no accountaiblity, no overarching ethics, no avenue to get mistakes fixed.
This just leads to a stupider electorate that is less likely to vote after choosing for themselves which candidates and issues they wish to support. Instead, they’ll just vote for the candidate whose attack ads work best.
I wish I had the optimism that many of the posters on Donklephant have, but I don’t. Where you see the sinking ship of the evening news, I see the sinking ship of America.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
This reminds me of when John Madden took over as commentator for ABC’s Monday Night Football. ABC had hoped Madden’s presence would boost MNF’s slowly sagging ratings, but most media observers said it was futile because MNF just didn’t fit into the network TV landscape anymore. They turned out to be prescient, as ABC finally dropped MNF after last season. But at least there was cable TV, specifically ABC’s sister network ESPN, to pick it up again for 2006. Nightly network news shows, on the other hand, can’t rely on cable as a safety net.
April 6th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Tim,
What makes you think that a greater percentage of the public is less informed now than they ever have been? People who want to be informed, stay informed. No one magically becomes a force for democracy by plopping their ass in front of 30 minutes of serious news (when the evening news was serious).
Sure there’s a lot more partisan spin out there now than there was, but there’s a lot more people digging for the truth too. The explosion of news is a great thing for democracy because it increases the amount of information and opinion from which to base one’s own view of the world. Some people are sheep, sure, but that doesn’t mean that we’re a bunch of idiots who can’t properly make decisions without the help of Walter Cronkite.
As for there being no avenue for mistakes to get fixed, most blogs allow comments. And, trust me, if I write something and get my facts wrong, someone will point that out within the hour. You might prefer that fact checking to go on behind closed doors, but it’s no less valid when it goes on in a comments section.
But maybe I’m just one of those Donklephant optimists. Damn half-full glass. :)
April 6th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Tim: What you’re describing in the post above my previous one isn’t so much a case Americans no longer wanting to be informed, as one of Americans no longer being informed with the same set of facts. This may actually bode worse for the nation than if Americans were merely sinking into apathy as Cronkite claims. If the news marketplace has become so fragmented that citizens can’t even agree upon a common set of facts to form the basis of a national debate, that sounds to me like a secular Western version of present-day Iraq – not quite a civil war (yet), but too close for comfort.
April 6th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Alan,
No, no one becomes a force of democracy by sitting down for thirty minutes of serious news. They become a force for democracy by wanting to make the effort to inform themselves. By taking the effort, it shows that they’re willing to put a little work into this American experiment.
If the American people were actively informed and engaged in the democratic process, then 527 groups would be useless. People would actually know how their representative voted and what their opponent feels about an issue, because they would have read/watched/heard it directly. That’s far better than having an interested opponent/group shouting at you what they want you to believe the other side said. The fact that Soros/Swift Boats even have success is a sign that people aren’t informing themselves.
There may be more people digging for truth, but there’s even more people shouting hackery at the tops of their lungs. The truthtellers are more drowned out than before. That’s not progress. How much original reporting are blogs doing? Every time it happens, the blogosphere makes a big deal about it, precisely because it’s so rare.
Remeber, Donklephant, TMV, the Reaction, et al, these are exceptions. They are not the rule. If you make a mistake, we’ll politely (more or less) call you on it and we’ll engage in a reasoned discussion about it (like we are right now. For that, incidentally, I’m thankful.) However, that’s not standard operating procedure in non-centrist blogs. Out there, especially in the biggest of the big (Kos/Powerline/LGF/democraticunderground), if you dare to disagree with the commonly accepted line, you’re shouted down, asked why you dared to invade their sacred space, possibly banned and never heard from again.
I’m just scared that as much as the leadup to elections sickens me now, it’s only going to get worse. The root cause appears to me to be people not actively informing themselves. Once that happens, political tricks can sway the voters on things other than issues, which is counter to how this whole mess is going to work.
Joshua: I have to agree with your assessment of two sets of facts prohibiting a common debate. With the riection we’re headed, who knows what the end result will be. All I know is that these are not boring times.
April 6th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Tim,
I will agree that too many Americans aren’t interested in informing themselves or are only interested in informing themselves about the goings on of Jessica Simpson. But I don’t know if the decline in evening news viewership correlates to a decline in our desire to stay informed. From my studies of history (which are admittedly not as robust as other’s on this blog) America has a long and proud history of political ignorance. The decline of the networks is a symptom, I think, of media diversification, not of an increased number of idiots.
As for the blogosphere, you are right that most are useless–God knows I’ve said as much myself. But my point was that the form itself is not inherrently devoid of fact checking. When done right, blogs are well-checked by their readers.
But I’m not saying blogs are any substitute for mainstream media sources. They’re populist punditry sites–very useful but reliant on real journalists to do the heavy lifting.
Of course, the real question here is how do you get more people to be truly engaged in order to make informed choices? I don’t know the answer to that. But I’m pretty sure the evening news isn’t and never was the solution.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Dang. I was hoping you knew the answer as to how to get people to make more informed decisions. ‘Cause I sure don’t, at least under current constitutional interpretation. (I haven’t figured out all of the consequences of what would happen if we reversed the interpretation that money is speech and therefore can’t be regulated. I’d like campaign spending to be regulated, but I’m wary of setting precedent.)
The decline in news viewership/paper readership is a chicken-and-egg question. Did viewers abandon “hard” news because they wanted entertainment, or did the major news sources shift to softer news and then consumers abandon them?
And actually, which is worse: evening news, which culls what it thinks is news down to thirty minutes, or cable, which doesn’t have 1440 minutes of news to fill so it props up non-news and calls it news? Each is harmful.
I don’t have hard numbers on this one, Alan; I just have a sense that people just aren’t engaged. This goes beyond pithy polls that ask if you can name more freedoms than Simpsons. The proof to me lies in that more and more people are perfectly willing to let parties and pundits think for them rather than make their own decisions. That, I think is worse than it’s been for a very long time. If people were more engaged and informed, I think there’d be more centrists.
Of course, I’m just in my mid-twenties, so my perception of American history takes a short view. (And I’m sorry that I kinda hijacked this thread!)
April 6th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Tim,
You didn’t hijack this at all. This is a great conversation.
I’m only slightly older than you (early 30s) so I too am only drawing on a few decades of personal American experience, but I just have a suspicion that there’s always been a certain, small percentage of Americans who are engaged in our politics and the rest either ignore it or only drop in from time-to-time.
What I think is going wrong is not a lack of people engaged in our country but a lack of leadership within specific political communities. The shrill, divisive folks seem to be rising up to the top and that pollutes the entire culture. As for media’s culpability in this, I think they carry a fair amount of the blame–specifically for choosing a market-based approach to the news that rewards high ratings. This may have been inevitable, but that doesn’t mean news producers should be proud by the way they program shows that are nothing more than hour-long shouting matches. Invariably, the best shouters are rewarded with more screen time and more clout.
It’s not good. But we can’t expect the news media to change their habits anytime soon. Instead, we must work from the outside to promote political leaders who will not sucumb to the divisiveness cultivated by the media. While a lot of Americans may enjoy the shouting matches as a kind of political sport, I don’t think most Americans enjoy the polarized culture we now have. A leader who can rise above is very much needed.
Hope we find one.
October 13th, 2006 at 6:27 am
Unlike Tim and Alan, I have the benefit of 36 years of voting and at least 45 years of watching net work news if you can count 10 years old as a valid starting point.
I didn’t start out as a conservative. One of my first recollections of network news and a conflict with my father was the coverage of the 1968 Democrat National Convention. I believe there were lots of demonstrators and lots of cops beating on them. I walked in the middle of the broadcast and made some snide remark about “pigs” beating on the protestors. The next thing I knew, my feet were off the floor and I was suspended by the collar up against the refrigerator. My father said, “Don’t come in here and open your mouth until you know what you are talking about.” As this was the ONLY time I ever remember my father exhibiting this kind of emotion and behaviour, I remember it well. I now try to get as much information as I can, especially before voting.
I also remember that news was more “newsworthy”. Less fluff, less opinion, and far less left wing biased. Today, I have extreme difficulty watching network news. It is so far left and so blatantly biased, it makes me angry. Some of my friends wive’s won’t even allow them to watch it because it makes them so upset.
I am not a Christian nor a pro-life zealot. I have 8 years of college education, 2 degrees, and post graduate study at Yale University. I have owned my own businesses and I have worked for others. I have voted since I was 19 years old (just after the right to vote was given to 18 years old). I don’t believe that I have ever missed an election. I take voting seriously and in the recent Florida primary election, I searched the web site of our local newspaper to find bios and information comparing and contrasting candidates. I get information and “news” from networks, local stations, Fox News, Newspapers and the Internet, as well as people. I might be more typical of the educated baby boomer consumer than the younger people.
I think the decline of the news and “journalism”in general in this country is due to the extreme liberal slant of our colleges and universities. A Pew study discovered that only 7% of journalists considered themselves conservative, yet every left wing biased “journalist” I have corresponded with thinks they are not biased.
Which came first, crappy network news or nondiscriminating lazy viewers? I believe the one promotoes the other. Years ago, at a clinic and accreditation for amateur hockey referees, one former professional official made the statement about proessional hockey which I think applies to professional sports and network news. “It’s not sports anymore, it’s entertainment.”
If students in public schools were properly educated and the journalists strived for objectivity (not balance) and less to change the world to conform to the personal philosophy, I think we would fare much better as a country. Lawyers need to take the blame for a lot of what is or isn’t said on the news these days. Tons of lawsuits have affected free speech and encourage political correctness, one of the deadliest things to happen to America ever.
Teach your children well. Create in them the thirst for knowledge. Then give them that knowledge and show them how to find it on their own. Discourage materialism. Stop glorifying rap and hip hop and criminals and bling and ebonics and catering to millions of latin american immigrants that won’t speak English. What is wrong with nerdy America? Imagine the intellectual discussions of our founding fathers. How many Americans today could even comprehend one of their debates?
Television and Hollywood promote the wrong goals and the wrong heroes.
Couric isn’t a journalist. She’s a newsreader that injects her own personal (and distasteful) left wing bias into any and every story she can.
I know this was a rant. But many of us Americans are sick and tired of the extreme bias in network news and of Katie Couric and other talking heads just like her. We are tired of being depicted as the bad guys. We are not. We are just Americans that were born and raised before political correctness and have watched our country slide downhill to the left at an ever increasing rate of speed. 30 somethings just don’t have a clue. We aren’t fascists or warmongers or bible beaters. We don’t want to starve babies or senior citizens (which we nearly are). Which just want our country to hold true to the foundation and framework of the geniuses that sacrificed their lives so we coudl be free to accomplish whatever it is that we want to do.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
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November 12th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
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