Angry Thespians

I have yet to find out to whom George Eliot was referring when he (really a she using a nom de plume) wrote, "He was like the cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow." But there are plenty of people in the news media who fit the bill.

I will never forget seeing Katie Couric's appearance on Larry King's show. Larry had lots of questions for Katie. How she felt about her new job as the anchor of CBS's evening newscast. How she felt about being the first female anchor of one of the big three (CBS, NBC, ABC) networks’ nightly newscast. How she planned on signing off (what she would say) at the end of each evening‘s newscast. Very important matters. At least the media was making it out to be important. Therein lies the problem. Anytime the media campaigns to bring attention to the media, it becomes the cock in Eliot’s quote.

The most obvious problem with all of this was that Katie landed the gig far too late in the game. You see, back in the day, there were only three major networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS. Each network offered a nightly newscast. The timing of the newscast was perfect. It was around dinner time, and families were home together (mind you, it was a different world back then). Families welcomed news anchors into their home each day, and relied on them to fill them in on what happened during the day.

I remember watching the news in the evenings. The three networks aired their newscasts at the same time. How was one to choose which network to watch? It came down to whom you liked the best. In my youth, the viewer was faced with choosing Dan Rather (CBS), Tom Brokaw (NBC) or Peter Jennings (ABC). I liked Brokaw. So I watched NBC. (I’m fully aware of the oddity it is for a youngster to watch the news.)

The “so what?” factor that hit so heavily against Couric’s landing the anchor position at one of the big three would have been irrelevant if the 24-hour news outlets had not surfaced with the advent of CNN in 1980. Couric’s biggest challenge was making her new job seem important. It was painfully obvious that it was unimportant because of the fact that CNN and Fox News, not to mention the other 24-hour cable news networks, already had female anchors who had one-hour shows all to themselves. What do you do with a half-hour nightly newscast if you’re CBS’s first female anchor when there is already a Nancy Grace with an entire hour all to herself each evening on Fox News? Or Paula Zahn’s hour-long show on CNN? Suddenly, Couric’s achievement looks like a participation trophy handed out at a Little League banquet.

And how did Couric get the job in the first place? Dan Rather, the quintessentially dramatic news man, decided to retire. The stage was set for an historic transition at CBS. Rather, who had been around CBS news since Moby Dick was a minnow, was retiring from the CBS Evening News, and Couric, who enjoyed monumental popularity on NBC’s The Today Show, was to take Rather’s seat at the storied and legendary news desk. Rather’s retirement was widely advertised and built up. It seemed like a pivotal moment in American history. One of the big three giants was to step down. I did not think I could miss Rather’s final newscast. Even newscasters on other networks were speculating at what Rather would say as he signed off for the final time. I began to wonder myself. What parting words would Dan Rather have for the world?

It turned out that Rather looked stoically into the camera--right into my eyes!--and said, simply, “Courage.” What a let down. And in retrospect, what a joke. What he said was not the joke. Instead, the fact that everyone cared about what he would say was the joke. After all, isn’t the newscaster, or newspaper reporter, simply there to tell the story? Isn’t he or she there to convey facts that have relevance to everyone’s life?

There are far too many people in the media who think that, at the very least, they are the story. The stories they tell are not the story, but they are the story. Or bigger than the stories. They think that people tune in to their shows not to listen to the stories they tell, but to listen to them tell the stories. Big difference.