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SEIFFE:  Katie's Big Night

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

By Ralf Seiffe

It has been years since I have regularly watched the CBS Evening News.  There are a number of reasons for this but the most practical is that the network’s local outlet, Channel 2 Chicago, apparently cannot broadcast a signal strong enough to travel the 13 miles from the Sears Tower to the North Shore.  Another is that the broadcast is aired too early for a post-industrial economy; I usually work long past 5:30.  As a consequence, I’ve fallen out of the habit of watching CBS but that’s had an unexpected and delightful benefit--I missed most of Dan Rather’s career as the anchorman.  

Now, however, we are “modern and lucky” as the old Bic Banana advertisements touted.  With TIVO, we can rearrange the broadcast day and see our favorites when it’s convenient for us, rather than for the TV programmers.  Using that power, I decided to give Katie Couric’s first night a view and to see what I’ve missed all the years I’ve spent watching cable news.  

As directed, the TIVO tuned in at 5:30.  Soon after, I clicked on and the first thing I noticed was that Katie wants to be a girl.  Like Kitty Carlyle sweeping onto the set of a 1960’s game show, the new anchoresse initially appears in front of her new anchor desk to let middle-agers like me leer a bit.  One wonders, however, if she asked anyone if the jacket she chose for her debut “makes me look fat?” 

After delivering the teases for the evening’s stories, the control room runs the brand-new CBS corporate music and the voice-over talent announces Katie.  Hey! That’s Walter Cronkite, with a meme harkening back to the day when CBS was the most trusted institution in America.  Makes you wonder if the suits at Black Rock would rather have missed Rather, too.  

But enough process, what about the actual broadcast?  The first segment had the usual MSM prattle about the failure of American foreign policy by showing clips of the President selling his vision.  Cleverly, Katie avoided an empty-headed Democrat elected official to rebut the President.  Instead, the new Tiffany interviewed Tom Freidman, noting his work writing as an expert on terrorism.  The author of The World Is Flat, an apt description of the interview, advanced the premise that good things happen where American troops are plentiful. If that’s true, it would follow that we should increase the military--a question left unasked by the new anchor. 

Friedman also said that America “has always been in the business of exporting hope, not fear, and in the last few years we have really reversed that.” Katie swallowed this whopper whole, accepting the premise and asking only how to “change that.”  Rather (there’s that word again!) one wishes she would have challenged The New York Times’ most cerebral columnist to explain how introducing democracy into the Middle East is not “hopeful.”  He suggested we need to get back to that “naïve optimistic place” Americans know so well.  Naïve optimism?  That sounds a lot like George Bush’s vision for people of Mesopotamia and eventually, all of the Mid-East.  

In the next segment a surprise--good news!  A giant oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico .  After almost three minutes of shop-worn commercials, Katie reported that Chevron had discovered a huge oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico .  The story may be good news for drivers but it was bad news for the English language.  The word “they” appeared in the one sentence lead-in three times. What are they teaching at Bryn Mawr?  

Despite the sophomoric introduction, Anthony Mason’s trip to an oil platform was interesting…and revealing.  First, this was television at its best.  It featured a cartoon map to show this new field is an American asset.  Scenes showed the reporter dwarfed by the 46-story machine in the middle of the ocean. The first amazing fact was that the platform produces enough oil to propel your car 55 million miles every day!  The second amazing fact was a graphic showing what “goes into the price of a gallon of gas.”  According to CBS, 53% of the price is getting the crude out of the ground.  Another 18.1% is consumed refining it.  Then, trucking it through the distribution system adds another 9%.  Let’s not forget taxes--they add another 19.7%.  

I don’t know about you but all during the last year, the media has been telling me how the oil companies have been earning fabulous profits implying that they have been gouging the public.  This report did not list profits as part of what “goes into the price of a gallon of gas.” So profits must be what are left over.  Adding the numbers in the graphic sums to 99.8% of the pump price.  The obvious conclusion is that profits explain the remainder, amounting to two-tenths of one percent of the pump price.  If that is true, Katie and her crew are telling us that taxes are about 100 times larger than the company’s profits.  

This sort of reporting will doom Katie.  She may be a great news reader but such sloppy regard for MSM Articles of Faith like obscene oil profits will soon bring the wrath of the powerful, upper West Side media mandarins.   

©2006 Ralf Seiffe

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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