[Mb-civic] KATIE COURIC VERSUS AMY GOODMAN

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

KATIE COURIC VERSUS AMY GOODMAN
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

We haven't done the poll, but our guess is that most Americans recognize
the name Katie Couric.

And they wouldn't know Amy Goodman from a hole in the wall.

NBC Today Show co-anchor Katie Couric said this morning that she is
leaving the show to become the anchor for the CBS Evening News.

Amy Goodman is the anchor of the award winning one-hour television and
radio news program, Democracy Now.

Couric gets more ink than Goodman in the mainstream press.

That's because Couric plays by the rules of the game.

Goodman doesn't.

Couric has been with the Today Show for 15 years.

She has also been a contributing anchor for Dateline NBC.

For most of her professional life, Couric has been a celebrity
interviewer and stenographer to power.

According to the Today Show web site, she has interviewed "a panoply of
world leaders, national political figures, writers, actors and pop culture
icons."

Some of her groundbreaking political interviews have been fawning
sycophantic things with:

George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Hillary
Clinton, Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Jennifer Wilbanks ("whose
disappearance just before her wedding day created a nationwide sensation,
earning her the moniker "runaway bride"), Tricia Meili -- the Central Park
Jogger, John F. Kennedy, Jr. John and Patsy Ramsey about the death of
their daughter, JonBenet,

Amy Goodman has reported more substantive news in one year that Couric 
has
reported on in a lifetime.

Just last week, Democracy Now ran a two part interview with Noam Chomsky
about his new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy.

Would Couric run a debate on the Israeli/Palestinian issue between Noam
Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, as Goodman did earlier this year?

Would Couric interview Norman Finkelstein on the same?

Would she know who Norman Finkelstein is?

Would Couric know Al Lewis as anything more than Grandpa on the 
Munsters?

Or would she dare interview him on his radical political philosophy, as
Goodman did before Grandpa Al died earlier this year?

Would Couric know about the 1991 massacre of 271 peaceful protesters in
Dili, East Timor by Indonesia forces?

Goodman was there with the protesters, was beaten, but survived.

If Katie Couric were interviewing Vanessa Redgrave, would the
conversation be dominated by the death by Israeli bulldozer of peace
activist Rachel Corrie -- as was Goodman's interview last month of
Redgrave?

Would Couric dare interview the now untouchable Harry Belafonte -- after
he called the war criminal a war criminal?

Would Couric travel to Nigeria -- as Goodman did -- to document
Chevron's complicity with the Nigerian military in putting down an
indigenous revolt?

Couric is going to CBS News, the old stomping ground of Edward R. 
Murrow.

The recently released movie of Murrow -- Good Night and Good Luck --
purports to be how Murrow stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his
communist witch hunts.

But the movie is actually about the sacrifice of television news at the
altar of corporate commercialism.

Murrow had slim hopes for television.

He could see the writing on the wall.

As movie reviewer John Powers put it, the movie's real theme is "the
inherent debasement of mass news in a commercial culture, a process so
powerful that even brave individuals can't stop it."

"You see, news is a product that must be able to pay for itself," Powers
said on NPR's Fresh Air. "In practice, that means getting ratings, finding
corporate sponsors and newsmen becoming purveyors of fluff, and that's
precisely what we see happening in the film. Murrow's show 'See It Now'
has to fret about alienating its sponsor, Alcoa, when it goes after
McCarthy, and Murrow himself must placate CBS by hosting the celebrity
interview show 'Person to Person.'"

Powers says that "like it or not, the age of infotainment was in the
cards from the very beginning."

"And for all his highfalutin speeches about how television can educate,
illuminate and inspire, Murrow could do nothing to slow it down," Power
said. "Seeing it now, his famed anti-McCarthy broadcast looks less like
the flowering of a golden age than a blip on the radar of packaged
commercial news, rather like Shepard Smith and Anderson Cooper
unexpectedly exploding with anger during Hurricane Katrina before
returning to their usual sleek selves."

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are what Edward Murrow professed
television could become.

Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News represent what he feared it would
become.

Good night.

Good luck to Amy Goodman and Democracy Now.


Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are
co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of
Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2006/000235.html>


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