Katy Didn't
by Robert Miraldi

 I was telling a class recently about the new world of journalism, about how reporters in Baghdad travel around in armored vehicles in order to go to interviews.  About how journalists are not only targets for guns but how they get abducted and held hostage.  And how, in the case of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, they are beheaded to make some point about America as an enemy. 

And so I was intrigued when my computer screen flashed the headline, “Katie Braves Streets Without Makeup on Her Way to Work.”   Was Katie Couric working her way across the streets of Darfur to see the misery there?  Was she trolling around in New Orleans to see what progress is not being made in recovery? Was she in Afghanistan measuring a war-torn country?  Or in the Gaza Strip to see the breakdown of Palestinian life? 

Unfortunately the answer was no to all those questions.  She was simply on her way to CBS’ news headquarters in Manhattan to begin work as the new anchor of the station’s evening news broadcast, which is watched each evening by 7 million people.  And, horrors of horrors, she did not have her makeup on while the cameras followed her.  No one asked her: so Katie, what do you think of the war in Iraq?  Do you think we should raise taxes during a war?  Will your station follow the growing gap between rich and poor in America?  Do you think the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade? 

Hard to say if Katie would answer those questions cause we all know that TV anchors and news people are supposed to be neutral on such subjects.  But I just wish that instead of the media pondering her makeup or her style makeover for the anchor chair or even if her smile will pull CSB out of third-place in the ratings silliness---instead of all that I wish Katie would speak up about what issues make her angry, or interested, or aroused.  How will she cover the news and direct CBS’ worldwide news team? 

The rap on Katie Couric as she begins her tenure this month in a position with tremendous power is that she is not a hard-news person, that so many years on NBC’s morning show has made her more interested in frivolity and recipes and celebrities.  But that is unfair. She has done her share of news interviews on important topics.  The real question is will she have the passion to push her network towards sustained reporting and investigations of the serious topics that abound in America and the world.  Might she be daring enough to force important topics to be in front of the public and on the government’s agenda? 

Will she have the temerity to hearken back to Edward R. Murrow who, with producer Fred Friendly, went after the civil liberties assaults of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and had the nerve to wonder about a government that was intruding into people’s political thoughts. (Sound familiar?)The same Murrow who roused the nation’s consciousness with a Thanksgiving Eve documentary about the plight of America’s poorest and most abused workers, migrant farm laborers.  Of course, this was the same Murrow who went on each week with celebrities on an interview show that seemed so out of keeping with his tough newsman persona. 

Asked why he would do this program , Murrrow, cigarette dangling, said, “I do that show so they will let me do the tough news shows.” So, Katie can be as perky and silly as she wants if it brings higher ratings which would thus allow her to spearhead tough investigative reporting.  I’d settle for her just to pick a few topics and make them her pets.  She earned plaudits a few years ago when, after her husband died of colon cancer, she began to promote regular colonoscopies as a preventive measure.

She even went on air live to have her own colonoscopy performed.  It is an issue to which I relate. I had colon cancer two years ago and it was diagnosed by a routine colonoscopy.  But what Couric needs to do is take the lens of cancer prevention and spin it larger.  What about those who can’t afford colonoscopies? I was in Maine recently on vacation and my kayak instructor said he missed work much of last year because of an operation. He has no insurance and is still paying off the $8,000 tab.  He is not getting regular medical care of any kind, let alone colonoscopies.

Maybe she needs to ask tough questions about why the rate of colon cancer in America is so much higher than the rest of the industrialized world.  It would lead her to our diet of processed food and too much meat. And that would lead her to explore the fast-food nation that we’ve become, certainly an avenue that her McDonalds’s-sponsored employers might balk at her travelling.

She might want to remind her bosses that a tried-and-true formula for attracting audiences and hyping those ratings has always been a crusading form of journalism with expose elements.  When the turn-of-century muckrakers showed the problems being caused by the excesses of capitalism, the circulation of their magazines soared.  People gasped at the revelations.  I am not suggesting that CBS put on a muckraking expose every night, but they could begin to crusade on important issues. 

Nearly one in five children in America live in poverty.  Send a camera crew once a week to capture life in poverty, Katie.  You don’t blame anyone, just show the results of American indifference.  Nearly 700,000 people are homeless.  Spend one night a week with a homeless family.  Let us see how the other half lives.  One in five people on a soup kitchen line is a child. Get on line with those children and see what they eat and ask why they are on line.

The list of American problems is long – from serious drug problems and lack of treatment to inadequate medical care for veterans – and all Katie Couric has to do is ask her reporters to go out and look.  Don’t wait for George Bush or George Pataki or Hillary Clinton to hold a press conference. Seize the initiative and force them to respond to CBS’ agenda.  Many years ago a fabled Chicago editor Wilbur Story told his staff to “Print the news and raise hell.”  Exchange the word broadcast for print and it is still good advice.

Raising a little hell will also raise CBS’ ratings.  The people like it when their media give a damn about important issues.  America needs a journalism of outrage that reminds us that too many terrible things still go on in America. But it also will remind us also that a progressive society can fix its outrages. With journalism’s help.

(Rob Miraldi has taught journalism at SUNY New Paltz for 25 years.)

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