Several months ago, the president promised to fire and punish anyone on his staff found to be responsible for leaking secret information, particularly about the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, because he hates such leaks and considers them dangerous and unacceptable. This week, it came out that the Plame leak was authorized by the vice president, most likely by the president himself, sacrificing the truth and the security of CIA field agents everywhere for the sake of getting into the Iraq war. Naturally, a bombshell of this magnitude– smoking gun evidence that our elected leader is a Machiavellian reptile of the lowest order– has been jumped on by our watchdog media with all the force you might expect. Why, look at the cover of NewsweeK:
See? There it is, right there in the upper left hand corner, in that text roughly the size of the caption for their lead story. Their lead news story is about a woman reading news stories; will people listen to her read news stories? What if her news stories are about her reading news? Will people listen then, and if not, will Newsweek do a news story about it? Maybe she should read a news story about the cover of Newsweek. Seems only polite.
April 9th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Have you discontinued your subscription with a colorful letter explaining why, or do you even bother with Newsweek anymore?
April 9th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I’m actually trying to do less raising my fist in the air and shouting. “Take that, Washington Post Company (2005 earnings: $300 million)! You just lost all twenty of my dollars! That showed them. Nothing.” The way things are now, it’s not like I can abandon them for the non-stupid news outlet. I mean, sweet Christ: Katie Couric is the host of the CBS Evening News. A stewardess has Walter F***ing Cronkite’s old job. The solution to this problem isn’t to cancel my Newsweek subscription, it’s to cancel my oxygen subscription.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:27 am
News and Entertainment continue their post-Cronkite merge. New job requirements for “news” anchor include:
botox injections
square jaw (if male)
cute smile (if female)
at least three elective plastic surgeries
personal stylist
cross-market appeal coefficient of at least .70
Old job requirements that are no longer required:
journalism degree
strong analytical reasoning skills
conceptual understanding of the role of the media in a democracy
thinking that your own personal needs for fame are secondary to the actual news
April 12th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
When was Katie Couris a stewardess? I looked her up, and here’s what I found:
From 1987 to 1989, she was a general-assignment reporter at WRC-TV, the NBC Television Station in Washington, D.C. While there, she won an Emmy and an Associated Press Award for her work. From 1984 to 1986, she was a general-assignment reporter at WTVJ in Miami. In addition to covering crime, drugs and immigration issues, she wrote and produced an award-winning series on child pornography. She began her career as a desk assistant for the ABC News bureau in her native Washington, D.C., in 1979. In 1980 she joined CNN as an assignment editor. She moved to Atlanta as an associate producer and later became the producer of a two-hour news and information program. She eventually became a political correspondent.
Ms. Couric has won two Emmys, an Associated Press Award, a National Headliner Award and, from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Sigma Delta Chi award. She has also received the Washington journalism Review award as Best in the Business and been named one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year.
Couric graduated with honors from the University of Virginia. She lives in New York with her daughters, Elinor Tully Monahan and Caroline Couric Monahan.
+++++++++++++++
You mean she only went to UVA? That’s practically community college. Over twenty years as a journalist, and they expect us to think maybe she is qualified to report the news? Shocking.
I’m not saying that the state of news reporting isn’t in crisis, but I’m not sure Newsweek is the magazine about which I’m most concerned.
That said, you should send a letter. I bet you it would get published. I sent a letter recently and got a free massage in return. Who knew?
The recent news about the President possibly ordering the leaking of certain pieces of information has not yet been directly linked to the (actually illegal) exposure of Valerie Plame. It is news, certainly, but not exactly worthy of impeachment.
April 12th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
That Katie Couric bio omits the 15-year hosting of the Today Show, which I agree is not literally the same as being a stewardess in the sense that it is vastly worse. Still waiting to see Tim Russert’s cooking segment with the author of “10 Ways to Put the Zing! Back in Your Marriage.”
“Twenty years as a journalist,” indeed. Matt Lauer would not get a pass on this from me, by the way.
She did! She did not go to Harvard and Yale like President Bush, the world’s most famous smart person, notoriously good at his job.
I am less attached to academic presence as a measure of merit since college.
As for writing a letter to the editor, hoo lawdy miss claudie, I think it’s safe to say those days are in the rearview. It might be worth it to adopt a nom de frappe on occasions like this, but before you know it I’m running around in a Hamburglar mask throwing bricks through windows. I try to redirect my letter-writing energy into meditation and perfecting my swearing.
April 13th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Besides, it isn’t like Newsweek wasn’t totally aware of what it was doing:
“Katie Couric got a new job. Have you heard about it? OK, it’s a dumb question—Rep. Tom DeLay quit Congress last week amid a corruption probe, and his move didn’t get nearly the ink that Couric’s departure from “Today” did. “
April 13th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I’m running an issue behind, which can make the “News” part of the whole magazine a little dubious after a while. (The longer you wait, the easier it is to read: “‘Will They Find O.J. Liable?’ Oop, somebody spoiled this one for me already. Next!”)
From what you’re saying, though, it sounds like the old Reach-Around Special. “We’re not covering this stupid crap like it’s news; everyone else is acting like this stupid crap is news, and we’re covering that, because that’s a cultural phenomenon. We mention how stupid it is that everyone is reporting on it right at the beginning of our report on it. See?”