Posted on 06/11/2007 3:12:50 PM PDT by Kaslin
As already noted on NewsBusters, former CBS anchor Dan Rather appeared on Monday’s edition of "Morning Joe" and lobbied for a "a strategic withdrawal from Iraq." He also found time to twice bash his "Evening News" successor Katie Couric for dumbing down and "tarting up" the news. After giving the standard caveat that Couric is a "nice person," he went in for kill. Speculating on the program’s declining ratings, Rather complained to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that "the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience."
Rather vociferously derided the media’s obsession with celebrities, in particular the hyperbolic coverage of the Paris Hilton affair. (This is a fair point, but it’s a little odd to be making it on MSNBC, one of the worst offenders in Hilton overkill.) For a second time in the 7:30am hour, he attacked the "superficial changes" made in his absence:
Dan Rather: "You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They've done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years. They make all those kind of the superficial changes. I do want to say that, I think, under Rick Kaplan, that they have tried to harden up the broadcast in recent days, but that is a relative phrase, harden it up. That , you know, the trend line continues, as I say, dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage."
The MRC has documented Dan Rather's long history of liberal bias. A collection of "greatest hits" can be found here.
A transcript of the exchange, which occurred at 7:37am on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," follows. You can also download the video of Rather's remarks.
Joe Scarborough: "You know, Dan, the thing that Chris Licht was talking about, maybe you read it in the Times or, I don’t know where you read it– There was, it seemed to me this terrible miscalculation by Rome Hartman and a couple of CBS News execs that they were going to soften up the news and that way they could expand their viewership. I would think, if I am sitting down at 6:30 to get the news to see what’s happened today, I don't want fluff stories. Do you think that that is one of the problems that the Katie Couric’s had coming in is that maybe they tried re-brand the evening news in a way that Americans just didn’t want to accept?"
Dan Rather: "Well, I totally agree with you, Joe. I want to make clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She’s a very nice person and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time and I think it has become even clearer that the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up, in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think that people at 6:30, or seven o’clock at night or even 5:30 in the central time zone , six o’clock when it’s seen, that that is what they want. This is a continuation of a trend that we've talked about before, Joe and Mika, and John, and that is the combination of what I call the corporatizing of the news has led to the trivializing of the news. If you notice, it isn’t just anybody's evening news. That the front page of the New York Times took space the other day to talk about, I know we don't mention her name, so I will call her Rome Marriott. This woman, Rome Marriott, Paris Hilton, on the front page of the Times. And then, today’s Washington Post has a big spread, a multi-column spread on the front page about celebrities. And the belief runs strong in the corporate towers of almost every news organization, print or over the airwaves these days, that if you go to celebrities, uh, it increases your audience. There is no empirical evidence to indicate that. But even if it were true, I think that those of us in journalism are going to have a lot to answer for when you put Paris Hilton on the front page and put developments and celebrities on the front page and put developments such as the splintering of the coalition of the Anbar Province in Iraq, which has been helpful to us, but is now splintering apart and the fact that, what, 12 or 13 people were blown up and killed at a police station on Tikrit, when you put the war on the inside pages and Paris Hilton and other celebrities on front pages, it tells you that we have got a lot to answer for in journalism."
Scarborough: "No doubt about it. And, again, with CBS News and with Katie Couric, so many people are trying to kick Katie around. But I think that you're exactly right. I think that the big problem here was a miscalculation that at beginning, you that somehow you're going to bring in 35-year-old viewers if you gave ‘em celebrity, if you gave ‘em, again, the 'Today’ show ethos, and that’s just not working. And Rick Kaplan is over there now, and from all I understand, Rick is trying to bring a harder edge of news to it, but a lot of people watching you and then watching Bob Schieffer have already left. And it seems to me like it's a great challenge."
Rather: "Well, it is a tremendous challenge for her. There are other factors. You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They've done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years, they make all those kind of the superficial changes. I do want to say that, I think, under Rick Kaplan, that they have tried to harden up the broadcast in recent days, but that is a relative phrase, harden it up. That, you know, the trend line continues, as I say, dumbing it down, tarting it up, going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage. I couldn't feel stronger, Joe, and I know from listening to you, that you feel the same way, this war, it's a terrible war. We’ve let the people who are fighting the war down. I pent the weekend sort of brooding, and brooding something not my nature, as Mika will tell you, brooding about the fact that we’ve put these young people in the position in Iraq every day where they face dangers, unspeakable dangers. They're out there in the wind and sand, you know, and in the mud and the rain, and we let them down, and the idea that in news that the war is inside, inside news, not front page news is border-line criminal."
This coming from Dan Blather, an expert at “dumbing it down”.
At least Dan put some effort into it. He paid good money for fake documents, etc. Along comes Couric who thinks she can get by on looks alone, putting no effort into attracting the young 50-65 demographic.
Daniel Irvin Rather, Jr. (born October 31, 1931 in Wharton, Texas) was an anchor for the CBS Evening News.
Dumb it down, tart it up, or lie it through - your choice Danny.
Loser tells loser how to keep on losing.
Come think of it only thing that could probably save CBS news monk it is Looter guy
See he is so presentable on CBS news
Honorable in suit yeah hold a beer LOL!
I can be a nice guy - really...but I'd RATHER NOT.
I think maybe Paris Hilton will get a job working for Barbara Wawa, now that Rosie is gone.
HA, HA, HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, HA,HA, HA, the sad thing is that you are RIGHT!!!!!
Go away Dan....retire to Smithville never to be heard from again.
Swell little town....don’t MESS with Smithville, TEXAS, Dan.
The tart was bitter long ago, now *both* are merely rotten...
the infowarrior
At least Dan put some effort into it. He paid good money for fake documents, etc. Along comes Couric who thinks she can get by on looks alone, putting no effort into attracting the young 50-65 demographic.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am in that demographic and I would much RATHER watch the squirrels in my yard than watch Couric, a vastly overrated chipmunk who never had any looks to speak of and certainly is not eye candy at this late date. I saw Raquel Welch on the tube a few days ago and she has Couric beaten one hundred to one for looks and one thousand to one for brains and class. Maybe they should have made Raquel the anchor.
LOL!
Looter Guy doing the news.....I had never seen that one before.
Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, on Tuesday suggested that sexist attitudes were partly to blame for the faltering performance of Katie Couric, the news anchor he recruited to the network with a $15m annual pay package.
“I’m sort of surprised by the vitriol against her. The number of people who don’t want news from a woman was startling,” Mr Moonves said of the audience’s reaction to Ms Couric, who this month brought ratings for the CBS Evening News to a 20-year low.
"He reiterated, however, that he was committed to Ms Couric and that he believed her programme would succeed in spite of its last place standing behind rivals ABC and NBC....
"Ms Couric has managed a 2 per cent increase in women age 18 to 49 since her September debut. However, that has been more than offset by an 11 per cent decline among men over 55, who still constitute the bulk of the evening news’ audience."
Apparently, the decline in that last demographic has fueled the bunker mentality at CBS that paints Couric as the victim of a Neanderthal reaction. However, Moonves in the same speech acknowledged that CBS moved away from “hard news” when they replaced Bob Schieffer with Couric in favor of an emphasis on human-interest stories. Not only did that not attract a large following among younger viewers, but it turned off people who watch news to see ... news. Given CBS’ poor demos on younger viewers anyway, even the 2% increase comes as a result of having almost nowhere to go but up.
However, admitting that CBS blew it when they screwed up the formula for the show would put the blame on Moonves for the failure. Admitting that they overpaid for Couric, who apparently brought very little of her Today audience with her to CBS, would also make Moonves look like an idiot. Therefore, Moonves and his team at CBS want to shift blame to the people they supposedly serve — the audience. It’s a strange strategy. Does Moonves really think that he can attract new viewers by accusing them of being chauvinist pigs?
It makes no sense, in any case. Plenty of women successfully anchor local news shows in big-market cities. They don’t appear to have problems with women reporting in any corner of the nation. CBS had Connie Chung co-anchoring with Dan Rather for a while (1993-95). They didn’t can her because the audience abandoned them — she got canned because Rather got jealous over her assignments, and also because Chung acted insensitively towards the Oklahoma City Fire Department in the wake of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah building. ABC has had Barbara Walters anchor the news for a brief period, and many women have featured roles on prominent news magazines, such as CBS’ Leslie Stahl and ABC’s Diane Sawyer.
Even if it were true — which it isn’t — then Moonves is still an idiot. Does he mean to inform Viacom shareholders that he gave Couric a $15 million salary without testing to see whether her gender would be a factor? I call BS. Somewhere, CBS has an entire file cabinet of focus group responses to Couric and/or a generic woman anchoring the nightly news. It would have either shown that the CBS Evening News would tank, if Moonves is correct about the high level of sexism, or it would show that it makes no difference.
If the former, then Moonves is a poor executive for making that kind of investment in a losing proposition. If the latter — which is a certainty — then the fault lies not with the audience, but with CBS for airing a stinker of a news broadcast. Moonves should stop spending so much time blaming his audience for their taste, and spend more time fixing his organization and the show.
— Ed Morrissey, http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/010224.php
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Since “the news” is really just entertainment, that is about right...
Well Dan is better looking than Colic and not as liberal.
Dan, do you think people need to listen to filtered news when they can go to the source??
Pray for W and Our Troops
CBS should fire Rather for that comment. Oh, wait a minute . . . never mind.
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