What Was That? What WAS That? What was THAT? WHAT WAS THAT??

As someone who has done thousands of newscasts as a reporter, anchor, director, producer and writer, I can tell you that the CBS Evening Views with Katie Couric is not a newscast. I'm not quite sure what it is. It looked like a one-person Today Show stripped of all its hard news. Of the who, what, when, where and why of a news story, "what" is the most important qualifier. If you can't tell people what happened, it is not news. The lead story was about the Taleban in Afghanistan -- from the Taleban's point of view, for crying out loud. Why did the Taleban allow a female CBS reporter into one of their secret strongholds? Because they know CBS is on their side and NATO fighters would not bomb their hideout within 30 minutes of the reporter getting back to their base. Oh, "what" happened? Nothing. It was not a news story, it was a feature. Who leads a newscast with a feature? Katie did. The second story might have been news, since something happened. President Bush gave a speech today on the War on Terror. Jim Axelrod opened it saying, "President Bush is casting the war on terror in new terms yet again." Yet again? That isn't reporting, that is commentary. Axelrod goes on to day, "Clearly the President hopes his strong suit -- the War on Terror -- will absorb his weakness -- the war in Iraq. And that required making the struggle larger than any single terrorist." That is clearly opinion, not fact. With a smirk at the end, Axelrod said it was "clearly a 'stick with me' speech." Was this a news story? Well, it reported an actual event but was so full of opinion that it would have to be classifed as an editorial. Who airs an editorial in the first 7 minutes of a newscast? Katie did. So, NOW we'll have a news story, right? Nope. What we had was an interview with NYT columnist Thomas Freedman about the War on Terror. Of course, with his perfect 20/20 hindsight, Freedman pointed out all the "mistakes" that have been made in Iraq, including cutting taxes, slimming down the military (done before 9/11) and not sending in an overwhelming force. Of course, if we had sent in an overwhelming force, Freedman would have been screaming about American jackboots on foreign soil. No news there. Now, this is weird. Nine minutes into the newscast, she does something called CBS News Briefing. What? I thought this whole show was supposed to be a news briefing. She mentions that 7 out of 10 rescue workers at Ground Zero have some kind of lung problem, the CEO at Ford Motors has changed, and the Crocodile Hunter died. News? Yes. But nothing more than bullets, containing the most basic of information. The entire segment lasted 45 seconds. Want more details? Go to cbsnews.com. Break. Did you know that cholesterol can come not only from fettucini Alfredo, but from your Grandpa Alfredo? Now THAT'S news! End of break.

And now we have yet another feature called Eye on Your Money. There was a news story there -- that Chevron discovered a huge oil deposit in the Gulf -- but it was just used to introduce a feature telling us what goes into the price of a gallon of gas. It was like a mini Discovery Channel documentary. At the end, I'd forgotten what the original story was. Another commercial break followed by another feature called freeSpeech. That's not a typo -- freeSpeech. In an introduction that was just as long as the commentary, Katie informs us that "Expressing your opinion is very American." Shades of Edward R. Murrow, that is deep. Katie introduced Morgan Spurlock, who rightfully trashes the lack of civil discourse in our society. No doubt Katie thought he was talking about Ann Coulter. At the end of the segment, Katie promised we would hear from a lot of people, but the only one she mentioned was "Rush Limbaugh on Thursday." She knows a ratings-booster when she sees one. "Do you have something you want to get off your chest? Go to cbsnews.com. " No news here. So, we're 20 minutes into the newscast and..OMG!...another new feature! This one is called Snapshots. (sigh) So, they showed a video clip of Douglas Edwards holding up photos of 19-week-old Prince Charles in 1949. Douglas Edwards reminds me of a young Emperor Hirohito. They went on to show pictures of Suri Cruise, who looked like she was wearing a wig to make her look like Charlie Sheen. Another commercial break. Another feature. This one is about a guy from Wisconsin who paints portraits of third-world children in orphanages and then gives them to the kids. A feel-good story, but not news. And that's it. That's all. There is more hard news in Jay Leno's monologue than in this newscast. Wait....a contest!!! It seems that Katie has "wracked" her brain and cannot come up with a witty sign-off. Wanna help? Just go to cbsnews.com and suggest something. Is that exciting or what? Is that news or what? Nope. I used to do what we called a "clip show" like this. Every week we got a cassette containing a few dozen feature stories from around the world. What we didn't use in our newscasts, our station manager made me put in a Saturday afternoon clip show. His reasoning was, since we paid for it, all of it should be aired. I mentioned to him that that's like pro-rating the cost of a window by the number of people who look through it. After awhile, the window will pay for itself. He never liked me, for some reason. CBS Evening News has become a clip show. I'm guessing this will be like Cop Rock. There must be a bunch of CBS execs right now thinking, "What have we done?!" And what was with that hoochie eye make-up?