Couric, Gibson winners in TV election coverage
In a sense, everyone in TV news won during this long and historic election cycle.
When the coverage started, analysts were certain the Television Age had ended, and we were not somehow instantly in the Era of the Internet. But the medium roared back and became the dominant force in election coverage. Everyone enjoyed record ratings.
That is one lesson to be learned form the election that just ended: Media epochs don't end and begin on a dime. TV, even the part known as the so-called dinosaurs of network television, is still the principal story teller of American life -- even as this TV critic moves almost full time into writing this blog and living online.
But there are many important lessons to learn from the actions of several winners and losers in TV coverage during this dramatic election. I'll be writing about those in a number of posts. But let's start with two of the top honors that go to CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric and ABC anchorman Charles Gibson for their focused, forceful and revealing interviews with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Before Gibson and Couric, the GOP image machine was successfully selling the largely unknown Palin to Americans as a "frontierswoman." Folksy and bold, that's a good thing in a country that defines its core identity in terms of its relationship to The Frontier. (Think Daniel Boone and John F. Kennedy -- and about 10 million archetypal figures in between).
But what an empty vessel and an act-like-you-know-character Palin came to be seen after just a couple sessions on the evening news with these two network anchors.
Without Gibson and Couric, I do not believe we would have had such powerful late-in-the-campaign negative assessments of Palin's qualification as the one Colin Powell delivered on NBC's Meet the Press, for example.
And Powell's words, which by the way were delivered on one of those so-called dinosaurs and reported second hand by everyone else in new and old media, were devastating to her and the man who selected her, John McCain.
Gibson was steady, methodical and took Palin apart like a professor slightly annoyed at his recognition that the student hadn't bothered to even try and study the night before.
And, boy, did he have gender issues to deal with from those who were angry about the way their candidate came off looking in the interview. Go back and read the comments to this blog about what an evil sexist bully Gibson was for putting his chair so close to Palin's and "intimidating her." Oh yeah, the woman who shoots animals from a plane was scared by old Charles Gibson sitting too close to her on a TV set.
Couric, who has dealt with more gender issues than any 10,000 pioneering women should have to, was the perfect interviewer to bat second in the order. No one could use the gender talk against Couric, and if anyone didn't want to admit it before her conversations with Palin, they had to acknowledge it after: Couric is the best interviewer in TV journalism.
Don't talk me about Bill Moyers or even Charlie Rose. Couric works nuances of conversation most network interviewers don't even know exists. There was a reason she was such a phenomenal success on morning television and it had little to do with her so-called perky persona. It was the interviewing, stupid (and I address that to myself as one of the critics that did not appreciate how incredibly skilled she is one-on-one).
Again, it appeared Palin did no preparation for the exam, while Couric pulled a week of all-nighters. I have never seen a TV interviewer better prepared than Couric, who showed the nation a vice presidential candidate who did not know what a vice president did, seemed to have never read the Constitution -- or a daily newspaper or magazine, for that matter. I wonder how the school that gave Palin a degree in journalism feels about that last point.
No, what Gibson and Couric is not in a league with Edward. R. Murrow exposing Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Palin did not yet -- and probably now never will -- have the kind of power McCarthy did in the 1950s. But she had the makings of being as reckless a force -- and they stopped her in her tracks for now at least.
Here's another winner: Rick Kaplan, the veteran executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, who not only worked with Couric to pull that newscast back from the brink of implosion when he took over 18 months ago, but helped remake it into a journalistic winner. The newscast on the night that the first part of Couric's interview with Palin aired was a model of how the nightly news should be done: crisp, focused and confident that the stories it chose to cover that day were the ones that mattered most for its viewers.
This is getting long for the Web, so let's break it into more than one post. In my next installment, I'll talk about NBC News and Brian Williams, CNN and John King, Jessica Yellin, Dana Bash, Suzanne Malveaux and Candy Crowley.
Could I pass on Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews? not after seeing the five-headed monster David Gregory tried to play lion tamer to on MSNBC election night.
And I'm taking nominees if you have some. But, please, tell me why you think the news organization or person is a winner or loser -- and what we can learn from the way he or she performed in election coverage.
(Above: ABC News Photo of Charles Gibson by Donna Svennevik; CBS News photo of Katie Couric by John P. Filo.)
Comments
you have got to be kidding me!
couric and gibson top winners? your bias is unreal and off the charts.
the mainstream media is the loser in all of this. their credibility is shot, it's gone. they are a joke.
They are gone, all right, Brandon. But only in the starnge planet on which you live. Check the ratings, Mr. Pluto. Thanks. Z
Posted by: brandon | November 6, 2008 10:30 AM
i'm the one on a strange planet? puhleeze! are you unaware of the transparent bias the media showed throughout the election cycle? just look at all the studies done so far comparing postive vs. negative stories for each candidate.
nevermind, the editing that took place for these couric and gibson interviews.
why not interview biden the same way? you realize that biden believes that hezbellah was driven out of lebanon by the U.S and the U.N. yet he was never called out on it.
stick to reality shows.
... and i was wondering where all the bitter whiners went... I hear you, and it sounds like this, 'wahwahwahwaah...'" Z
Posted by: brandon | November 6, 2008 1:20 PM
Wow, it sure is interesting how different people glean different things from the same performance. As an independent who voted for Obama and watched the CBS results show I found Couric smug and glib and I found Shieffer far too congratulatory toward her. He at one point stated that her interview of Palin was the defining moment in the election. They lacked humility and your responses to Brandon show you are a bit full of hubrus right now as well. It's the one thing that troubled me most in this election. Obama is a good thing but his followers lack tact and are incapable of building bridges. Greedy success is a sure precursor to disaster.
Her interview was a defining moment. Why shouldn't he have said that? Z
Posted by: Tom | November 6, 2008 4:03 PM