Let's Wish Katie Couric Well

Conservatives are understandably a bit sour about the accession of Katie Couric to the news anchor position at CBS News.

While liberals are doubtless agog at the big “first,” the first woman ever to become a major solo news anchor, to us it’s just same-old same-old. Another liberal face gets to read the news at a liberal news desk.

Yes, there’s a long conservativev rap sheet on the “perky” Katie Couric, and Lowell Ponte is up to the challenge of reading it out in full.

But let us hear it for Katie. She’s a liberal feminist, and she has reached the peak of her profession. Good luck to her.

Anyway, the liberal slant of the news doesn’t come from the on-air talent, it comes from the news organization itself. CBS News is a liberal news organization and it ought to have a liberal on-air anchor. And as a liberal news organization it ought to be first to have a solo woman news anchor.

The problem with CBS News and with the rest of the liberal news media is highlighted by Michael Barone. If you were setting up the news media from scratch would you staff it with people so that 90 percent adhered to one political party and 10 percent to the other? Er, no, you probably wouldn’t. Unless you were like the broadcast news executive in this exchange:

"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."

"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."

He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."

Really, we Republicans and conservatives shouldn’t be discouraged by this. When our adversary displays such a staggering blindness, we ought to be able to exploit it, all the way to the presidency, to majorities in both houses of Congress, and even to the Supreme Court.

By the way, let us credit Rush Limbaugh for the sobriquet “perky.” Rush’s epithet perfectly describes the reality of Katie’s talent. It is her attractive, female, woman-next-door qualities that have made her a success. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—unless you are a liberal.