NEW YORK - With her tenure in the No. 1 chair at CBS News fast becoming the biggest marquee flop since Heaven's Gate, Katie Couric's spin machine is placing the blame squarely on the American people with a pointed message: If you're not watching Couric, you are both sexist and elitist.
Speaking at a press conference at CBS's famed "Black Rock" headquarters in New York, Couric's agent Carla Solas-Poulantzas-Davis and CBS News svp-corporate communications Marvin Kreske denied persistent rumors that the spritely infotainer would be out of CBS top anchor chair at the end of the November election coverage, and they went further to deflect blame for Couric's miserable ratings performance.
"Obviously, Katie's positives are huge — who the hell is more positive than, Katie, after all?," said Solas-Poulantzas-Davis, a vice president at Creative Artists Agency. "But I think we've hit that old glass ceiling, where some people simply refuse to recognize her otherwise obvious superiority as an august, accomplished newswoman because she was born with a vagina."
Kreske quickly jumped in with a passionate defense of CBS News overall. Acknowledging CBS executives' recent admission of the "frustrating" problems with its nightly news ratings, he suggested that whatever segment of viewers might be tuning out to The CBS News with Katie Couric were only proving themselves to be out of touch with ordinary Americans.
"Look, Q scores don't lie," Kreske said. "I think it's fair to say, if you're suggesting that the people who have given Katie some of the best Q scores in the news business, that these people don't know what they're doing, that just seems to me paternalistic and condescending. People know what they like and trust, and they like and trust Katie and the CBS News, even if a lot of other people don't.
"I think that lot of other people should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves, what is it inside that makes them think they're so much better than the people who like Katie, who read Us and People every week, who go to church, who work retail and watch Two and a Half Men?" Kreske said.
Couric's broadcast drew 5.4 million viewers last week, the lowest since CBS's ballyhooed selection of the morning talk-magazine show host to replace 50-year veteran newsman Dan Rather. The 5.4 million marked a stark decline from 5.6 million the week before and 6 million two weeks ago, just the latest of an ongoing erosion of CBS News viewers that has even eclipsed the overall flight rate of news consumers from increasingly facile and servile broadcast news. NBC News scored top ratings for the week with 8.2 million viewers per broadcast, followed by the ABC newscast, whose 7.5 million itself marked a substantial dip from 8 million viewer per broadcast the week previous.
Couric, who built her news resumé interviewing celebrities on NBC's Today Show, seemed to put her stamp on venerable news chair once occupied by Edward R. Murrow in a high-profile September 2006 interview with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for the network's august 60 Minutes. Couric treated Rice, the former Bush national security advisor, to a menu of softball questions, including a number of "lifestyle" queries regarding her personal life and dating. These seemed curious choices in the face of Rice's central role in confabulating the case for an illegal war in Iraq that all three networks credulously helped shill, greenlighting U.S. summary torture of prisoners and her possible indictment for war crimes — none of which were discussed.
Solas-Poulantzas-Davis dismissed notions that the CBS News had become "less substantive" under Couric's tenure, pointing out the makeover Couric was given to look "less perky." She denied Couric didn't bring to CBS the bona fides to helm a "hard news" show.
"I don't know why people keep asking questions about what she actually covered at Today and how that actually applies to this job," Couric's agent said. "The point is she was there, every day, doing the job. Who cares what that actually involved? She's been vetted, she knows how to play the game, and to suggest she doesn't, frankly, is a sneering affront to everyone who watched her all those years, millions and millions of them. Shame on those other millions and millions who aren't watching."
Asked whether Couric's questionable news agenda and lack of probity might might have anything to do with viewers tuning out, Kreske lashed out. "What, so Sy Hersh would've been a better choice?" Kreske said. "That's what you want, isn't it? As long as it's a man, right? Have you seen Sy Hersh?"
In a curious, concurrent development, an ABC News spokesperson deflected suggestions that its own precipitous ratings drop for the week had anything to do with its abysmally received Democratic candidate debate, and made similar charges of elitism. Viewers conspicuously tuned out to ABC's Nightly News with Charles Gibson in the days immediately after Gibson and ABC top Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos hosted the debate. ABC's top newsmen found themselves booed at the event for focusing half the broadcast on superficial and factually marred questions, then eviscerated by subsequent media coverage.
The ABC spokesperson said such contentions indicated "an ugly bias against short, linear-thinking people. These men have years and years of newsgathering experience between them, have made a fortune at this, and I think, y'know, that just tells you they know what regular Americans want to know. Other than the people who booed. Who are also biased. And probably members of Moveon.org. So, most likely, anti-American."
FAKE NEWS UPDATE UPDATE: This fake news update is fake.
FAKE NEWS UPDATE-UPDATE UPDATE: Seriously, none of these people are real. Except the celebrity "news" readers involved. And then only maybe.