The "Evening News" Report: A Rick And A Hard Place
Kaplan began to really get involved with the show on Tuesday, and it's way, way too early to judge the results. (Although not for this dude.) One thing that is worth noting, however, is something that happened on Friday: A taped hard news interview in the first block involving Katie Couric. Couric interviewed David Iglesias, one of the fired U.S. attorneys. I'm hard pressed to remember the last time Couric did something like this, and though I'm not going to read too much into it, I will say that it's certainly nice to see Couric talking to someone like Iglesias and not, say, Mt. Hood widow Karen James.
Couric also reported a health story last week. The "Evening News" started doing more health stories when Couric came on board, and the early signs are that may continue. But again, it's early – so early! – so I'm going to resist doing much more reading of the tea leaves. Instead, let's look at the big story from last week – the attorney firings – and how it ended up dominating the news cycle. The story, like so many these days, was driven by the blogosphere. Mainstream print outlets then picked up on it, followed by TV News.
"What took so long?" asks today's official go-to media man, Howard Kurtz. "The dismissed prosecutors were local figures. The plan to replace them without Senate confirmation rested on an obscure Patriot Act provision. The dispute over whether they were dumped for performance reasons (the president's prerogative) or because of pressure from Republicans (a politicization of the Justice Department) was hard to resolve."
In other words, it was complicated. But then came those incriminating e-mails which prompted Democrats to call for Alberto Gonzales to go and defensive comments from the AG and the White House – "the very video elements that television needed to frame the story," as Kurtz notes. It sort of makes you wonder if Gonzales appearing in public to say "mistakes were made" was the smartest move from a public relations perspective.