Media Watch: With Fawning Coverage from Iraq, Katie Couric Greases Administration Palms

Katie Couric should be ashamed of herself (again). She has turned CBS Evening News into a features-rich skirt-around the news. That is, when there is "hard" news, you probably won’t find it on her broadcast. The news has to feel good, she thinks, and she announced before her debut that she planned to tell good news. (For inexplicable reasons, Brian Williams has gone down that path too lately. Maybe he wants to tie with Katie for last place in the ratings.) Unfortunately, the news isn’t always sugar-coated and the delivery of it shouldn’t be either. The big four networks have downgraded news to its most simplistic terms, stripped raw of any detail, depth, and context.

In Iraq, flack-jacketed Katie tried to look sporty and one-of-the-guys, as if that’s they key to moving up in the ratings game. By her prior newscasts, and her interviews of military leaders on the ground in Iraq, it was clear she was selected/cleared for this highly escorted tour (she rode in military aircraft and was protected by them) for her positive war-spinning—both previously and yet to come. The news is so good, we should all just fall in line and give Bush what he wants, you’d think from her gushings. Not so fast!

One thing is clear, though, this is “war made easy,” a fabrication of the spinners, who’ll tell the public anything to advance themselves and the bosses they serve. By contrast to all the truth-tellers --security experts, weapons inspectors (past and present), such as Richard Clarke, Roger Cressey, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Joe Wilson, Karen Kwiatowski, and many more, heroes all--Katie is the antithesis of the courage and bravado she feins.