After watching her interview with Condi on "60 Minutes" I just sent her an email letter.
Here it is:
Dear Katie Couric,
I've been disappointed in your work as anchor of "The CBS Evening News". You don't come across as a person who cares about hard news. You read in a lackluster way the important news of the day and items about critical world and national events. Then, when a "fluff" feature comes on... a story about a celebrity or a "gossipy" story - not real news but filler; that's when you perk up and seem interested. I also just watched your interview on "60 Minutes" with Condi Rice. Your softball questions to her are a disservice to Americans and a waste of our time. We don't need Happy Little Features. We need news, we need the fourth estate to hold this administration and congress accountable to the People. This is your job. You are not on "Today" anymore.
Also, your "Free Speech Zone" is a fiasco. Your choice to have none other than Rush Limbaugh to appear on "Free Speech" is inexcusable. No one in America has more access to free speech than Limbaugh. For 3 hours every day, replayed over and over again on some stations, he conducts a numbing national monolog. He uses a sickening hate speech directed relentlessly towards many many Americans day after day, year after year. He attacks Women, Minorities, Immigrant groups, Liberal and Progressive Americans and many others. People like him dominated the airwaves in Rwanda in the build-up to the Genocide there. He has more "Free Speech" than any other American except Pres. Bush. It is disingenuous to have invited him to your free speech zone.
When you introduced him you said Limbaugh would talk about the war on terror, yet he used his time to attack Americans who oppose the President's policies. You did not challenge him on this, or apologize to your viewers for the offensive content of his message or for your misleading introduction.
I believe you are not a News Person, but a feature story entertainer, celebrity interviewer. You are hurting the integrity of the News in America by your "fluff" non-news content and the dumbing-down of our critical news time each evening. I hope this creeping "fluff factor" will not come to dominate what we are now being served each evening as "news".
Please, Katie, get serious about what you are doing if you really care for news and America. If not, please have the grace to bow out. Americans need the truth in these dangerous times. We need people who care about News and we need people who won't just give us happy little features about a Secretary of State who is very close to being a war criminal for being complicent in torture.
Sincerely,
I have been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt since she started on the Evening News, but the Condi thing was a last straw for me.
I sent this to evening@cbsnews.com