By now its a foregone conclusion that the addition of Katie Couric to the CBS Evening News was a colossal mistake. Once proud and formidable, CBS is dead last among the network news programs on weekday evenings. She has been criticized on everything from her dressing habits to the choices made on interviews. Now she is out and crying about what a bad move it was to come to CBS and how it is everyone's fault but her own.
From The Huffington Post:
"People are very unforgiving and very resistant to change," Couric said in an interview with New York magazine. "The biggest mistake we made is we tried new things."
Couric's move to CBS has been a bust so far. The evening newscast's ratings are deep in third place, and CBS has rolled back some of the changes it made last fall to shake up the format. Couric conducts fewer interviews, an outside opinion segment was scrapped and the anchor admits she's even dressing down a little to give her critics less ammunition.
(snip)
Couric admitted there are days when she wishes she hadn't made the move to CBS.
"Of course," she said. "I'm human. I'm not going around `dee-da dee-da dee.' I have days when I'm like, `Oh my God, what did I do?' But for some weird reason, they don't happen that often."
It seemed like all Couric has done at CBS is go 'dee-da dee-da dee.' Choosing Rush Limbaugh as a newsworthy interview was pathetic. You would have never seen Edward Murrow perform as poorly as she has in the last few months. And he didn't need an enormous salary for it either. While alumni of the position have brought credibility to the CBS broadcast, Katie has done nothing but detract from it.
But is it all Katie's fault? The state of journalism today is precarious at best. There was a management decision to bring Katie in with a huge salary, banking on looks and her fluff from The Today Show. The sensationalism that the media chooses today centers around Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, not the scandals that the White House embroils itself in on a daily basis. Apparently celebrities draw better ratings that the ongoing degradation of our Constitution and liberties in general. At one time news was about things that impacted people's lives, now it is used for people to escape from the real world and into the ridiculousness of celebrity.
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