The Public Eye Chat With…Linda Mason
(CBS)
Brian Montopoli: Producers will contact you and say "can we do this?" Can you give me an example of that kind of interaction?Click here to listen to the interview.
Linda Mason: Sure. We're doing a story on something and we want to go get pictures of the person in question. Where can we go? Can we go on the sidewalk outside his house? Can we knock on the door and ask him to come out? …Of course you can't go on somebody's private property, but you can stand on the public sidewalk and have your camera there. They were just looking to get some video. So that's an easy one.
A harder one is we want to go undercover with a hidden camera. We're looking at airport safety, and we have a story on airport workers who don't have to go through the strenuous system that the pilots and the hostesses have to go through. They have a separate door where they come through. Can we send a hidden camera there? We talk to the lawyers and depending on what state you are, etc. etc., yes, and we did it. And it was a very interesting piece.
Brian Montopoli: Recently, as you know of course, a producer was fired for writing a Notebook that was in part lifted from a Wall Street Journal piece. What actions, other than firing the producer involved, has CBS News taken in response to that?
Linda Mason: That's something that happened a month ago, and I'd just as soon pass. We've taken – we think we have fixed the situation.
Brian Montopoli: Has there been any change in reminding people about standards? Has there been anything like that?
Linda Mason: Well, every time something like this happens, whether it's at CBS, the New York Times, NBC, ABC, yeah, we sit down and say, "Hey, we've gotten a little too complacent, we have to pay attention to these things." Absolutely.
Brian Montopoli: And so did that entail a company-wide refresher course?
Linda Mason: There wasn't a refresher course. It was ironic because I was scheduled to give a standards session to the Web at that very time, right before it happened…
Brian Montopoli: But that would have happened either way.
Linda Mason: That would have happened either way, yeah. It wasn't spurred by that event. It was spurred by, as I went through the different groups who I had not yet reached, the Web was one of them.
Brian Montopoli: Is the notion that CBS News has credibility beyond what maybe a blogger has particularly important to maintaining its popularity and success?
Linda Mason: I think a blog and CBSNews.com are two different things. I think a blog tends to reflect the opinion or opinions of the people putting out the blog. It in no way strikes to be fair and measured. It's putting out that viewpoint, I think. And I think that CBSNews.com is trying to put forth the whole story. So I think there's a real difference.
Brian Montopoli: And do you think people understand that difference?
Linda Mason: I don't know.
Brian Montopoli: You told me, a little while back, that you were "the first woman at every job I had at CBS News." And that includes in 1971, when you were the first female field producer for The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. I'm curious your take on Katie Couric's experience as the first solo female nightly news anchor.
Linda Mason: I'm just surprised at how, almost 30 years after I worked on the "Evening News" as the first woman producer, that Katie is having such a tough time being accepted by the public, which seems to prefer the news from white guys, and now that Charlie's doing so well, from older white guys. I guess they want the reassurance of a Walter Cronkite.
I had no idea that a woman delivering the news would be a handicap. And I'm afraid that Katie's paying a price for being the first woman. But I think it's a great trail that she's blazing, and I think if the broadcast continues to be as good as it has been, if we continue to break news, if we continue to tell interesting stories, people will start to watch. It takes time, I think. But I was surprised that there was an obvious connection between a woman giving the news, and the audience wanting to watch it.
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See all 232 CommentsDuring the Pelosi flap, who reported the Sergeant-at-Arms admission he requested the larger plane? The blogs. I had been trying for two straight days to post the Sergeant's statement on Jake Tapper's moderated blog as he pushed this story, but only posts without the statement and/or link survived. They even went so far as to edit out the press release from one post. The whole thing was documented by Mike Stark here: http://www.callingallwingnuts.com/2007/02/15/386/
Tapper wasn't the only one playing dumb, he just got caught. Tapper and John Solomon's dishonesty make Josh Marshall and Duncan Black necessary. It is the latter whom history will see as demanding facts trump ideology.
During the Pelosi flap, who reported the Sergeant-at-Arms admission he requested the larger plane? The blogs. I had been trying for two straight days to post the Sergeant's statement on Jake Tapper's moderated blog as he pushed this story, but only posts without the statement and/or link survived. They even went so far as to edit out the press release from one post. The whole thing was documented by Mike Stark here: http://www.callingallwingnuts.com/2007/02/15/386/
Tapper wasn't the only one playing dumb, he just got caught. Tapper and John Solomon's dishonesty make Josh Marshall and Duncan Black necessary. It is the latter whom history will see as demanding facts trump ideology.
If I want opinions, I go to The View. If I want objective reporting of the news, realistically, these days I go to the Fox News Station.
Oh please. Katie has done plenty of hard news. Just because she was good at the softer stuff on Today, doesn't mean she wasn't also good at the hard news. She worked the Pentagon beat before she went to Today for goodness sakes - that's hardly a soft news beat!
I've also seen Katie overseas interviewing plenty of world leaders, including in the Middle East, over the years.
Has anyone actually stopped to think that the reason Katie is "ratings challenged" at the moment is because the media is so busy beating up on her, including those with long term agendas against her like Alessandra Stanley, for whom Katie is a regular punching bag, that people are starting to believe what they say, just because it is repeated so often?
I watch both the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News regularly online(I live in Australia) and these days the Evening News is just as full of hard news, if not more so some nights, but unlike much of the US audience sitting down in front of their TV each night, I haven't been brainwashed into believing Katie is bad at her job by sections of the media who have an agenda.
"CBS still doesn't get it. Mary Mapes was considered "brilliant" by her "peers", but under scrutiny revealed herself to be a stupid partisan hack. Her book makes it even worse - its up to the skeptics to verify the accuracy of her story, not the other way around? This is what they teach at journalism school? And if someone as dumb and unethical as Mapes could climb that far into CBS, how many others are still there?
And look beyond the forged docs - whats more revealing is the arrogant and clumsy way CBS pushed and then defend them. People who cheat usually get caught because they grow complacent - over time, the husband stops investing energy in the deception, stops showering at the gym after his trysts, stops checking his collar for lipstick, etc. He's been cheating for so long that he gets lazy. As with CBS - we basically caught our spouse audaciously cheating in our own bedroom, and we're supposed to believe this is the first time?
No, the arrogance and carelessness of Mapes and Rather revealed that CBS has been cheating us for a very long time. Couric is fluff, an innane lightweight, but CBS's is tanking because they have lost all credibility. Perkiness is not going to bring us back."
I lol'd.
You've got to be kidding. Even people who like CBS News don't believe this.
When Katie fails, it won't be because she's a woman, it will be because she's not delivering a product that we want. We won't accept that inferior product simply because it's coming from a woman.
Blame the viewers--how has that strategy worked for your entertainment shows?
Stop trying to make excuses...could it just be Couric isn't "right" for the job.
Stop trying to make excuses...could it just be Couric isn't "right" for the job.
Stop trying to make excuses...could it just be Couric isn't "right" for the job.
Linda Mason's throwaway comment about viewers preferring their news from 'white guys' illustrates the distance between MSM people and news consumers. For starters, 'white guys' is urban liberal talk. Most of the people in the United States, and most news consumers are, uh, 'white', there, Linda. News consumers are disproportionately male. So using the term 'white guys' in this context is a little like using the term 'females' when talking about elementary education. Chattering-class people seem much more likely to be preoccupied with race and gender than ordinary people. The trouble starts when they project their obsessions onto the mass public, and try to stuff reality into this narrow framework.
Congratulations in taking a giant step backwards in credibility.
Barbara Walters would be perfect for the job, but since she works for another network you choose to blame your audience?
Pathetic.
I give you a gold star in How To Alienate Your Audience By Using The Gender Card excuse for your failings. Congrats!
Elizabeth Vargas, during her brief stint as anchor on ABC News, I felt completely different about. She fit the anchor role well, and I regularly watched ABC News with Vargas at the helm rather than the other networks with their male anchors.
It has nothing to do with wanting to "get [my] news from white guys"; rather, it is wanting to get news with my news.
The whole Rather-gate episode was the final straw for me, and more damning than the sloppy nature of the initial piece and the bone-headed defense of it was the Thornburgh-Boccardi report of their "independent" investigation.
One can read the report and all exhibits from front to back and never find any indication that the level of professionalism, due diligence and fact checking on that pitiful excuse for journalism deviated in any manner from the established standard at CBS News. In other words, that wasn't a particularly sloppy piece of work, it was par for the course. The only thing unusual about that 60 Minutes piece was how easy it was for the public to comprehend just how bad it was.
CBS News viewership is declining because the product is inferior. The choice of the news anchor is irrelevant.
I cannnot find the words to express my total disgust with her attitude.
What an ice cold hearted witch!!!!!!!!!!
Linda Mason demonstrates precisely why CBS News will always be in last place. What a pathetic, unsupported assumption about why Katie Couric is failing.
I knew Katie Couric would fail as an anchor as soon as it was announced. The brass at CBS, in their New York bubble, underestimated the intelligence of their audience.
New York and L.A. love Katie...because of their liberal biases. But the rest of the country recognizes Katie for what she is...a liberal activist who describes herself as a journalist.
I will never forget the morning I saw her interview a well-known religious activist...then in the next segment she interviewed a non-religious college professor on the same subject and thanked him for being someone who could "think about these things".
Katie Couric, like so many New York-based journalists, has a self-centered and superior view of her audience. She doesn't report the news...she lectures her audience because she believes they will agree with her political viewpoint if they are just "shown the light".
People were willing to put up with her activism from a morning news anchor...morning news in general tends to be taken less seriously. But the majority of Americans who live between the coasts were never going to accept Katie Couric pretending to be serious news anchor. In her role on the Today show, she barely put any effort whatsoever into hiding her political biases. Why would they expect any change just because she's on tv at night?
But there's just this one thing - I think she's biased in her reporting. Do you think maybe that has something to do with me not wasting my time watching her? Especially when I can go to the internet and get news and compare several reports and make up my own mind regarding what to believe.
It's interesting to me that Germany has gone conservative, Canada has gone conservative, France has gone conservative, England is about to go even more conservative and yet in the US, liberal news reporters think they are the vanguard of the future. What fools...
What a fabulous approach to dealing with low ratings...
blame the audience.
It's apparent that CBS played the 'cute' card in this instance. The trouble is, she's just too old to be cute anymore. She was fine on the Today show; I didn't watch it.
And then... for someone to say that America preferred to get their news from "older white" men???? !!!!... Shouldn't this woman be fired in the same way Imus was fired for his errant remark?
Katie Couric as a solo news anchor is like Ryan Seacrest in the same position. It's not that she's a woman - its her background and perceived lack of serious news credentials (combined with that annoying liberal bias) that is her problem.
It is easier that way. If changes are out of ones expected area of influence, then one need not do or be responsible. "It is not my/our fault".
In the meantime the ratings trend down and yes CBS's customers are voting with their remote control.
Suggestion for CBS News:
1) Do a even-handed poll of ex-viewers and get there reaction to Linda Mason's statement: "And I think that CBSNews.com is trying to put forth the whole story."
2) Recognize that Katie (Couric) is a talented broadcaster, but her personality type is that of an "advocate". She can no more "put forth the whole story" than a Hummer can win the Daytona 500. Hummers are great cars, but not good race cars.
3) Hire some producers that have as their goal to be effective at conveying the news. I cringe every time I hear a broadcaster talk about what they are proud about - other than being effective at bringing knowledge & information to the viewer. Serving ones own customers needs, verses the producers (which is what is happening now), will always add to their audience.
Good luck to CBS News! The nation needs better than we are getting from the "Tiffany Network".
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