So Katie Couric may be moving over to CBS, taking over from Bob Schieffer. I think she'll pull in new viewers for a while, but as a huge fan of Bob Schieffer, one who switched to the CBS Evening News after he took over from Dan Rather, I gotta say I'm disappointed. But the discomfort with Katie Couric taking over had me investigating if I had a bias against women journalists as hosts.
Not true, I concluded. I really like PBS' two female journalists - Gwen Ifill and Margaret Warner. I think either of them could host an news program and attract me (actually both do when Jim Lehrer isn't in town). Gwen hosts Washington Week, which is one of my must-not-miss political shows (the other two are McLaughlin Group on PBS and Chris Mathews Show on NBC). So why the discomfort with Katie Couric or Elizabeth Vargas or Connie Chung?
Well, here's my conclusion. Serious news viewers (and we're a small breed) don't want a journalist tainted by a non-news background. We would shudder to think of a sportscaster taking over the evening news, and we certainly don't like someone who spent the last 10 years of their life talking about minutae like fashion or cooking to migrate to the serious business of news. The network evening news are already suffering from an overdose on non-news and the lack of analysis, and I guess I have a deep-seated fear that a journo tainted with non-news will bring more of it with him or her.
So I may still continue to watch CBS News, but in the meanwhile, how about a network asking Gwen or Margaret to migrate over? Aw heck, it'll never happen. Neither of them would degrade themselves into talking the crap that network news would want on there anyway!
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