Of Katie Couric and Dan Rather
One female anchor is losing her job; another, her clothes
By Leslie Griffith
When Katie Couric was given the title of “America’s sweetheart it was a death knell. America relishes devouring its sweethearts.
If the news magazines and newspapers are correct, Katie Couric’s career at CBS, much like Dan Rather’s, is toast. The last chapters of this complex and revealing human drama are not written yet. But the plot, the sub-plots, the dialogue, the public’s perverse interest, and the motivations are nothing if not Shakespearean.
Two years ago, Couric was the first woman to anchor the evening news broadcast on one of the big three networks. On that day, I was called by local reporters for a quote. My own career in television began 26 years ago, about the same time as Couric’s. “It’s about time,” I told the newspaper reporters.
Couric and I have a few things in common. Bay Area viewers watched as I grew up before their eyes just as Katie Couric grew up in full view of the nation. Wives use to say in various ways, “You are the only other woman I will let my husband bring into the bedroom.” The intimacy of television is still very real, but the truth tellers of old are becoming history.
Couric’s story certainly includes sexism, ageism, feminism and perhaps other isms. But to focus on those age-old problems is to miss the big picture. And the big picture reveals what happens when broadcasting becomes just another business run by people with little or no concern for anything but profit. In this case, Westinghouse, Viacom, and CBS.
The new sales people in charge of many of today’s commercial conduits of broadcast news want happy faces on the young women who read the news. When the chirpy attitudes evaporate and the young woman grows up, the order is placed for fresh meat.
In editorial meetings across the country probably at this very moment, some male manager is delivering a condescending nose-snort directed at the smartest woman in the room. The woman whose experiences with the new corporate media’s lack of public concern and relentless pursuit of profits has made her void of anchor charm.
It’s a peculiar problem for a woman like Couric in television news because women as objects of desire or objects in general is becoming more popular again. Couric let the network photograph her legs, and use photo- shopped pictures for her publicity shots. Not a good move on her part. But, that’s nothing compared to some of today’s female anchors who appear to enjoy being objectified. Farah Fawcett hairdos, layers of lip gloss, and air brushed make-up can make the most determined journalist give up. One recently posed in a bikini.
But perhaps the real focus should not be the first-female aspect of this drama at all. It should be the relentlessly predatory and unfaithful way in which the new corporate media treats its talent -- much like it treats the public. It does not care for either.
Westinghouse, Viacom and CBS were giddy with desire for Katie Couric when she was perky, effervescent and full of mischief. But that fades fast when it becomes clear the stockholders and corporations who buy commercials are the real objects of desire, and those sitting in that chair are not pleasing them. Often times those are the very entities committing crimes against citizens. Hopefully you understand the inherent contradictions in that.
The look on Couric’s face these days resembles a Christian standing naked in the coliseum when the lions are turned loose. It’s gut wrenching to watch.
It reminds me of the look on Dan Rather’s face while bearing witness to his final days. It was brutal. He was a deer in the headlights appearing to be genuinely stun-gunned into a stupor. See:
As the most recent CBS-Viacom-Westinghouse drama unfolds and the curtain opens, Americans are getting a view of the Tiffany network now controlled by a false wizard who has taken up residence in what was once the Emerald City.
Leslie Griffith is a former KTVU news anchor. Check out her website at lesliegriffith.org.
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