10 Plus 1: Cynthia Bowers On Sports, Karzai And Carol Channing

(CBS)

What do you do at CBS News?

I am a general assignment reporter - the beauty and bane of which is that I never know from day to day or even hour to hour where I'll be. My 12- and 14-year-old kids have come to dread seeing the number for the CBS News in New York on caller ID. They hand me the phone with a weary, "It's New York, Mom." - with a voice so sad that when Gavin Boyle of "Sunday Morning" called last week and that number showed up, he was moved to scream out, "Tell them it's the 'good' New York, not the bad! I'm not sending you anywhere."

I don't envy the folks who have to make the decisions about what to cover and how vigorously to cover it. I do think when time allows a little background or context always helps viewers connect to stories. And I think we are doing more of that.

But the upside of general assignment reporting is that I get to dive into all kinds of stuff! I get to learn a little about a lot of different topics.

One of my funniest behind-the-scenes stories involves my dog-tired arrival in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December of 2002. After more than 24 hours on the road I collapsed as soon as I got to our "house," only to be awakened a short time later by the sound of gunfire. Nervously we all ran outside and listened to the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons and watched tracer missiles arc across the sky. We wondered, "Has the war begun again?" - only to be told by our Muslim "fixers" that this was purely celebratory - the month-long fast of Ramadan was over. The Eid was underway.

Red-faced, I went back to bed, and a short time later was again awakened by frantic pounding on my door. Apparently we had "scored" the first western TV interview with president-elect Hamid Karzai. But we had to be at the presidential palace by 11 p.m. - in 20 minutes. As we raced across town bleary-eyed on the war torn streets all I could think was, "Will Hamid Karzai expect me to wear a head cover?" while my producer wondered if perhaps we should write down some questions to ask. As it turned out, no head cover was needed, Karzai was charming, and after the hour-long search of our camera gear and persons by his body-guards our FIVE MINUTE interview went quite well.

I don't feel I have the luxury to voice my opposition to stories, although there are some I think are seemingly so trivial I admit to thinking, "If this plane goes down en route to, say, the world's most disgusting baseball burger, I'll be really ticked off."

If I were not in news, hands down, I'd want to be in sports. I still feel envious of sideline reporters, announcers, you name it.

Sports are why I'm in TV at all. I grew up watching Sean McManus's dad Jim McKay and discovered in high school that even a flat-chested girl with braces and glasses could get a guy's attention if she could recap all the weekend sports action succinctly. And when the youthful sideline reporters Jim Lampley and Don Tollefson were introduced by ABC Sports - I had found my calling. Sadly, that was long before Leslie Visser, Andrea Joyce, and Hannah Storm proved women can "do sports," so I gravitated to news! And I'm still here.

I wrote a daily blog while I was on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln during the most recent Gulf War. I didn't know enough to call it a blog, I just wrote about daily life on the five-acre ship with my 5,300 or so cruise-mates. I loved doing it and found that venue allows for personal perspectives that I think today's audiences enjoy. Now I enjoy the better written and more pithy back and forth topical blogs on Slate.com and like to read in on some the writings from private military contractor sites I can access. I learn a lot from the tales told by the men and women on the ground in war zones around the world.

The last good movie I saw was "Thank You for Smoking," but that was a while back. I'm reading Steven Coll's Ghost Wars and recently finished John Perkins' extremely scary Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

My favorite escape is mystery writer Robert Wilson - particularly his series set in West Africa. I dare you to read any of those books and not sweat along with private eye Bruce Medway in the steamy heat of the Ivory Coast!

My earliest memory of TV news is coming in from playing outside on a warm November afternoon in Alabama and finding the entire house dark, except for the glow of the black and white television. I knew something bad had happened. My parents were crying quietly as they watched Walter Cronkite describing the assassination of President Kennedy. I was five years old.

What I would like most to change is the general public's perception that we come to a story with an agenda. What I find more often than not is that the folks we interview on many issues are the ones with the agendas and it's up to us to try and ferret out where the truth really lies so that our network presents the story accurately.

The most fascinating person I've interviewed was Carol Channing. I heard her promoting her one-woman show on the radio and thought she sounded like a lot more than I remembered - the googley eyes, the bright blonde bob, and the little-girl voice. I got the opportunity to spend time with her for a piece on "Sunday Morning" and found her to be a smart, sexy, (and newly married to her childhood sweetheart!) octogenarian whose zest for life and unflagging exuberance made me realize that age is just a number.

As for jerks, if I named names then I'd be a jerk!

Wow, that's a tough one. As a general assignment reporter who is juggling so many topics it's hard to immerse myself in something - which I love to do and it's nearly impossible to maintain contacts and be positioned to see potential follow-ups. I still feel embarrassed when my colleagues catch developments to "my" stories that I miss.