The Daily Background

As part of CBS News/Katie Couric’s bid to “revolutionize the nightly television news” format, they’re trying all sorts of new things. And one of them is to expand their “nightly news” brand to, well, things that are neither nightly, televised, nor news.

One of the ways they’ve tried to expand is by offering exclusive web content. I’ve got no problem with that in and of itself, but their idea of what constitutes good “exclusive web content” is way off the mark. I’ve had beef with them before over this.

Well, one of their exclusive web content item is a podcast called “Katie Couric’s Notebook.” The basic idea is that she offers her on a particular relevant topic.

I’ll give them credit: the idea itself is cool. It’d be cool if her predecessor Dan Rather, or somebody who wasn’t afraid to be controversial did this type of thing, an opinion podcast. I’d watch that. There are a lot of advantages to web content over broadcast. For one thing, one of the major problems with the current nightly television news format is that it’s so short and commercial-packed, it’s hard to get any of the relevant context in there that most viewers need to truly understand news events.

But unfortunately, Katie’s idea of a good opinion podcast is offering her non-controversial opinions for 58 seconds on an extremely non-controversial topic.

For instance, “depression is bad,” and “the elderly should be cared for well,” and “airport delays are a pain in the neck.” I kid you not, these are actual topics of her “Notebook” opinion podcast in the last month.

She will on occasion, offer some more serious thoughts on some slightly-more controversial topics. I applaud her for supporting the HPV vaccine, despite the religious-right’s demands that nobody be vaccinated because women need to be kept in fear of STDs.

I hoped when I saw the topic of her most recent podcast that it would be similarly good. The topic was the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

Now I cannot possibly figure out how anybody could bring up the 9/11 Commission or the 9/11 Commission recommendations without criticizing President Bush and Republican-controlled Congress. But somehow Katie figured out a way.

Why do I say this? Well, the idea of an independent 9/11 Commission was strongly-resisted by the White House and stalled for ages. And later on the White House was slow to provide adequate funding for it. And finally they never actually implemented several of the trickiest recommendations that the group gave in order to protect America from future attacks. Talk about dropping the ball. (House Democrats last November promised voters to quickly pass legislation to implement the remaining recommendations, which they promptly did in January.)

So, I was interested in seeing Katie’s latest opinion podcast. The topic of the podcast seemed like she was going to give an actual opinion about it that might be mildly controversial. What a waste of 58 seconds.

In her commentary, Katie says:

“Over a year ago, the [9/11] commissioners issued a report card, assessing the progress we’ve made implementing the recommendations, the grades would make any mother mad. Twenty-six C’s, D’s and F’s. Some Senate opponents of the 9/11 recommendations claim that they contain huge hidden costs; billions to inspect ports, containers, and cargo. But what about the costs of another terrorist attack?”

Cute ending, Katie, but you left out pretty much all relevant context in order to take all partisanship out of this issue, and keep your viewers from knowing that Republicans have been stalling this and that Democrats have been 100% unified in enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations in order to make the country safer.

The Washington Post reported on the report card Katie references in a 2005 article:

Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately seized on the report, accusing the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress of failing to adequately prepare for future terrorist strikes.
[…]
These and other criticisms prompted a flurry of news releases and statements from congressional Democrats, who said Republicans had failed to make the country safe. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said that “an F is too high a grade for the Bush White House and Washington Republicans,” while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the report an “indictment of continued failure by the administration.”

Republicans had years to implement the full 9/11 Commission recommendations to make the country safer, but they didn’t bother to. And they’re very up front about the reason too: it would cost too much money to make the country safer. Why are people not outraged that Republicans have been stalling making the country safer because they say it would be too expensive– while they constantly brag about being tough on national security? Maybe it’s because people like Katie Couric “report” on this sort of thing without giving any context and only talk about Congressional opposition to the Commission in terms of “some in Congress” or “some Senate opponents,” without attaching a party affiliation to those critics.

And it is almost exactly on party lines. When Democrats finally were able to bring the 9/11 Commission recommendations to a vote on January 9 (something Republicans had stonewalled for years), not a single Democrat voted against making the country safer. 231 Democrats voted for the “Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act” (two members were not present and did not vote).

128 Republicans voted against the bill because they said that the cost of making the country safer was too expensive. Less than a third of Congressional Republicans sided with Democrats to make the country safer.

Soon the bill will be up for debate in the Senate. To vaguely label these critics of the 9/11 Commission recommendations merely “critics” without mentioning that they’re all Republicans is a disservice to voters.

Filed under: News Media, Z-TDB Blog