Katie Couric's first broadcast

Growing up, my dad always watched the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. So given the fanfare behind his replacement, I decided to watch Katie Couric's first broadcast. For those of you who missed it, I'm sure it can be found somewhere on the Internet, if not on CBS's own website.

I sat through most of the broadcast, and for someone who had millions of people watching her first day on the job, she performed just fine. She spoke like she was trying to get the whole broadcast out in a single breath though, so that was kind of odd, but I would chalk that up to first day jitters. Relax Katie, the ratings will come out the same regardless. I'm sure it will take, as my roommate said, a couple weeks for her to settle in and begin to put some of her personality into the broadcast.

I guess today was a pretty slow newsday as her broadcast began with coverage of the conflict in Afghanistan. Maybe I'm just ignorant when it comes to these things, but if the press interviews the Taliban "less than 10 miles from an American base," is there any obligation to inform someone about this contemporaneously with the interview? Or is this the type of thing that tends to blacken the foreign press correspondents and lead to kidnapping/beheadings? I don't really know the answer, and I'm sure there is a shield argument in there somewhere, but if we're in a war, shouldn't there be less redaction in these situations that won't necessarily cross a source line but at the same time help protect those trying to defend the very ideas that give the press carte blanche to report in the first place?

The only other memorable thing in the broadcast was seeing Morgan Spurlock, who created the documentary on Supersize Me (the movie about the guy who ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days and as a result gained weight, increased his potential for heart disease and postulated that eating fast food is not a healthy way to live). His probably 60-90 second segment was part of CBS's new "free speech" segment, which can be read about more in depth on their website. On the assumption that the news is supposed to be unbiased, why would CBS/Katie Couric choose to have such a liberal speak his mind on this "new public discourse?" Doesn't Spurlock already have a forum on FX for this type of discussion and generally as a filmmaker? You may as well have brought in Michael Moore. It almost reminds me of an episode from Arrested Development, but not quite.

Nevertheless, I think it's an innovative idea to increase the public discourse, and maybe we need such discourse pushed to the forefront of broadcasts like Katie Couric's. I would hope the future segments have the entire range and entire spectrum of the population, from children in a rich prep school in Connecticut to teenagers returning to their public district in Mississippi or Louisiana to farmers to doctors to lawyers to teachers to mothers to fathers to bums, etc. And garbagemen - they are probably the most underappreciated out of the whole lot. Obviously there are compelling stories to be reported (see, e.g., the Jason McElwain basketball autism story from a few months ago). I just don't see the draw in putting a moderately recognizable face who one commentator has called an "intellectual jackass." On the other hand and to his credit, Spurlock at least is trying to create a forum for viewers generally to realize that not everyone is upper middle class and maybe he cashed in a favor to be the first free press bit. See '30 Days' of Supersized Guilt. Cf. Ain't No Makin' It, a book mandatory in my sociology 101 course, but nevertheless a similar examination of inner city youths (black and white) trying to break out of the class system they have been born into (my apologies for my review of this in-depth evaulation and otherwise excellent portrayal of the low-to-middle class struggle since it's been almost 10 years since I've read it.)

So, kudos to CBS for trying something that youtube hasn't come up with yet, and kudos to Katie Couric on getting me to watch the broadcast news (almost in full) for the first time in several months.

Tags: katie couric, spurlock