'Evening News' Criticized For Not Leading With Johnson
While the "Evening News" ran the Johnson story third and devoted a little over a minute to it, the two other nightly newscasts …someone had to have adjudged holiday shopping as a better lead-in for the news than the possible surprise upset in the Senate, and as Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News [Katie] Couric ought to have seen why that was the less significant and compelling story. It's decisions like this that are causing people to criticize the broadcast, or simply to leave.
I contacted Rome Hartman, the executive producer of the "Evening News," to ask about the decision not to lead with Johnson. He declined to comment. This is ultimately a news judgment question, of course, and while people can second guess that judgment, it's never going to be something that falls into strict categories of right and wrong. It's difficult to come down too hard on the "Evening News" for making a decision that differentiated it from its competitors, especially as Johnson's condition was less than clear at 6:30 last night. That said, I agree with Sklar that Johnson is a big story, and one can certainly argue that it deserved top billing.