CBS--Why, why, why doesn't the public like Katie Couric?™ It's not because her husband died of cancer--we empathize with her on this, c'mon. I empathize with her because my family has lost several to that horrible disease, so I know what it's like. But enough about the GOP...The fact is, Couric's that despicable equivalent of a TASS news reader in the former Soviet Union, or some banana dictatorship our State Department supported (or still does). The public doesn't like careerism of this sort, and she's reaping the rewards of being a shill and a mouthpiece of the wealthy. Granted, some other pathological careerist will take her place like a Pez-dispenser, but she's the current candy. Or is it currant candy?
CBS executives like news president Tom McManus and CBS President Les Moonves can voice their support all they want, but eventually, the majority shareholders will have the final say. CBS made the news wildly profitable once, beginning with their news magazine "60 Minutes," a program that lost its luster after its unnecessary capitulation to the tobacco industry. Most of its original-members are dead or headed there. The show really had its moments, but they're long-gone.
It seems a fitting-end, really, for big news. Its time has come...to end. Making the news a business was a horrible sin that needs to be rectified. For that reason, it should be nationalized as it is in the United Kingdom, Canada, and much of the Western world. This can never be said or written enough: damn Ted Turner for creating CNN as a 24 hour national news network. This was one of the final-blows to journalism in this nation. Successive terms of Congress and presidential administrations have allowed the crass centralization of ownership of media for decades. We just don't want to learn what really works.
None of this matters. American newspapers are exponentially growing their Internet presence, while actually losing advertising dollars and hard copy readership. There is no parallel in our history for this. Internet journalism, analysis (my area), and general writing are taking-over, mirroring the publishing landscape of the 1840s when almost every neighborhood had a newspaper or a newsletter.
The answer is both centralizing and decentralizing media. Private ownership of national media was a mistake from its inception. Equal access for other viewpoints is essential, and the Internet is already accomplishing a lot of this. The American public are tired of being lied to, and having most of the real picture of our world withheld from them. A British CNN reporter named Richard Quest was caught in Central Park at 3:40 AM today trying to score methamphetamine. 24 hour news means reporters have a lot in common with truckers! Never mind your kids--do you know where your press is?
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