TVNewser reports that CBS appears to have hit on a successful formula with their Evening News Makeover with Katie Couric:

For the fourth consecutive day, NBC Nightly News was #1 in total viewers, topping ABC and CBS. But the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric continues to attract more viewers in the prized 25-54 demographic than NBC and ABC.

I haven’t watched the program, but I do recall it being described (and attacked on Reliable Sources by Linda Douglass as not “serious news” and more like cable). It seems to be working with its target demographic, though. And one e-mailer to TVNewser has a theory as to why:

> Update: 2:07pm: A self-described “armchair analyst” has a theory: “I’ll tell you why CBS is coming in first in the demo. They’re getting the viewers they had their eyes on going into this – the viewers who are getting news feeds on their computers and mobile devices all day, and really don’t need a review of the headlines on TV at night. CBS is providing an analysis of the news which is meaningful to the demo viewers who have seen text headlines and maybe a picture or two all day. NBC is getting the older viewers who may prefer the traditional approach and don’t know the news until they see it at 6:30.”

CBS News seems to have made its peace with the Constant Information Era. The network cannot hope to compete in the breaking-news arena. The only place it can make a showing is on the opinion (aka analysis) side, because most of its viewers will already have absorbed the headlines and the sound bites; they will want to know what it means.

While this is excellent news for talking heads, it doesn’t bode well for individual reporters who hope to make their reputations on TV. Journalists will get little airtime. Among other things, “nichification of the media” will mean—already does mean, it could be argued—fewer stars. And even greater, more vicious competition for the few slots that do exist.

Sounds like fun viewing!

Bill went ballistic. What’s up with that?

I’m still waiting for a cogent explanation…

UPDATE: here’s a very interesting report from ABC’s Jake Tapper, who went back into the archives, and made a discovery: it was the MSM, not the Republicans (as Clinton charges in his interview with Wallace), who went after Clinton with the “Wag the Dog” charge in 1998:

The conservative Media Research Council noted that “every network did raise the “Wag the Dog” scenario.” And indeed, according to the MRC story linked above, CBS ABC and NBC all raised the notion — with Senator Coats as a leading voice.

DATELINE NBC devoted a December 1999 piece directly using clips from the film to question the basis for the bombing.

And Frank Bruni of the New York Times devoted a whole story to the notion
So…quite frankly, it looks as though the “mainstream” media did a lot more to question President Clinton than did the GOP leadership apparatus…

From Alan Dershowitz, who proves that the press doesn’t have a premium on needling Jews. In this case Dershowitz takes a shot at a fellow Jew, Noam Chomsky, whose book had just been publicized by Hugo Chavez at the podium of the UN and promptly shot up to number 1 on Amazon:

“I don’t know anybody who’s ever read a Chomsky book,” said Mr. Dershowitz, who said he first met Mr. Chomsky in 1948 at a Hebrew-speaking Zionist camp in the Pocono Mountains where Mr. Dershowitz was a camper and Mr. Chomsky was a counselor.

Elif Shafak, the Turkish novelist who was charged with writing “un-Turkish” dialogue in one of her novels, has been acquitted. In an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post, she describes how unexpected were the charges and how relieved and hopeful she is about the outcome:

I don’t know precisely what happened in 1915. But as a writer, I’m interested in people — their stories, their silences, their pain. I believe in recognizing human grief. I find it sad that some Turks can’t talk about 1915, that ours is a society with collective amnesia. We haven’t come to grips with our past, nor have we recognized how bitter the Armenians are because their grief goes unacknowledged. I would like Armenians to forgive and forget one day, too, but we Turks need to remember first.

I had hoped that “The Bastard of Istanbul,” told through the eyes of the women of the two families, could be a bridge between Turks and Armenians, showing how similar our two cultures are, how much they share. I tried to tell my story with humor and understanding, but all this seemed to be lost on the humorless lawyers who were determined to put me on trial.

Early this month, they started circulating a vindictive notice on the Internet, labeling me — as well as many other intellectuals — sellouts and traitors. The message ended with a gallant call to “all patriotic Turks who love their nation and are aware of their patriotic duties” to be present to protest at the courthouse throughout the trial. Though I had been apprehensive before, this notice, with its alarming language of hatred, really got to me.

But their message of hate didn’t win out. At the trial, the lawyers and their supporters showed up in force. But for the first time, they were denied entry to the courthouse, which meant they couldn’t intimidate the judges and other court personnel as they had done in the past. And remarkably, they were outnumbered more than two to one by those who support freedom of expression.

This is a rare victory in the Muslim world for the values that we all hold dear—and take for granted—in the free, democratic societies of the West. Savor the whole thing. 

In the wake of the incident in which George Allen was (inappropriately) asked about his supposed Jewish heritage by a reporter, it has become clear that everything is fair game in a political campaign from here on out … notwithstanding Arianna Huffington’s attempt to draw the line at a candidate’s marriage and sex life (which is, famously, a shady area in her own life) on Reliable Sources, where she was drawn into an argument by David Frum:

FRUM: In the last segment of the show we are going to discuss Bill Clinton’s refusal to answer questions about the intimate state of his marriage, and I think many of the people [who] would say, why, it’s perfectly appropriate to ask George Allen about the state of his soul, would then turn around and say it’s inappropriate to ask Bill Clinton about the state of his sex life. …

HUFFINGTON: You cannot honestly think that the private state of a politician’s marriage is of the same caliber in terms of honesty and questioning and, indeed, permissibility for the press to ask about that as the heritage, the ethnicity of his parents?

Huffington will have a tough time explaining why one area of a candidate’s personal life—his or her religion—isn’t off-limits but another area—his or her sex life—is. This, of course, is Clinton’s point of view, too:

In the “Today” show interview, Vieira asked about a recent front- page piece in “The New York Times” dissecting his marriage and examining whether it will be an issue if Hillary Clinton makes a White House run.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think that the thing that I think is going to be interesting is whether the American people, after — with all the problems we’ve got, really want to see the press basically follow the Republican bloodhounds and do all that sort of stuff again, and whether or not the people that are doing can escape the same scrutiny. They have in the past. It’s been a free ride.

I think it’s a stupid way to spend our time.

Well, it may be stupid, but apparently, if two other guests on Reliable Sources are to be believed, that’s exactly how audiences, who have now officially been conflated with voters, want to spend their time: finding out about candidates’ peccadilloes.

Listen to Bloomberg’s Roger Simon’s explanation of why Peggy Fox’s questioning of George Allen was not inappropriate:

KURTZ: Let me come back to the question at the debate, Roger Simon. Peggy Fox said — we heard that the issue was honesty. She told me in an e-mail that she’s not the issue, Allen’s character is.

Was this a journalistically appropriate question?

ROGER SIMON, BLOOMBERG NEWS: It was not an inappropriate question. There’s plenty in George Allen’s background to give you an excuse to raise it. …
The point is, however, that even if that wasn’t there, she was asking a question because we want to know about celebrities in American society. And all politicians today are celebrities. How many newspaper columns, how many magazines, how many TV shows are devoted to celebrity gossip? This is just another form of that.

Kurtz seemed incredulous (a tired routine by now):

KURTZ: So celebrity gossip is OK in the context of a Senate race?

SIMON: Because people want to know about politicians for the same reason…

KURTZ: They want to know who they are?

SIMON: Absolutely.

KURTZ: All right.

Later in the show, Kurtz was lower-key when he asked blogger John Aravois a question about Clinton’s position that it was stupid to cover his marriage:

KURTZ: John Aravosis, is it realistic for Clinton to say the press shouldn’t cover his marriage when he his wife may run for president and he could be the first spouse?

ARAVOSIS: Well, it’s realistic for him to say it. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the press to actually do it just because, you know, in a sense, we’ve got a paparazzi culture that goes all the way up to the White House.

I mean, people — people want to know about Bill Clinton’s marriage even though it’s kind of not relevant in terms of whether Hillary Clinton is credible as a presidential candidate or as president. I mean, I want to know how she does on the war on terror, I don’t want to know how she does in the Clinton bedroom. It’s irrelevant.

Right: it’s irrelevant to the press—they’re high-minded, and interested only in the issues, of course. But the people, who are gossip hounds, who like bread and circuses, want to know.

And so the infotainment industry, which now encompasses the nation’s news organizations, will make sure that the people are served. So it goes.

Untroubled by the McCarthyite tone and line of questioning of George Allen by TV reporter Peggy Fox (which I wrote about here, in disgust), Arianna Huffington, interviewed today on Reliable Sources, asserted that asking about a candidate’s “heritage” and “origins” is no problem at all.

Here is what Fox asked Allen:

PEGGY FOX, REPORTER, WUSA: Could you please tell us whether your forbears include Jews, and if so at which point Jewish identity might have ended?

Here is the exchange between Kurtz and Huffington on Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: Arianna Huffington, I assume you’re 100 percent Greek. You ran for California three years ago. Would you have resented being asked in a debate about your grandfather’s or your mother’s ethnicity?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, HUFFINGTONPOST.COM: Absolutely not. I mean, it’s a straightforward question. And what made it a story is that George Allen could not give a straightforward answer and has not been able to do so ever since.

Let me suggest that a straightforward question to Allen, as Huffington refers to it, would have been: “It was recently reported that your mother was born Jewish, yet you are a Christian. Could you address this?”

Instead, the question was an elaborate trap that baited both Allen (its intended victim) and a lot of unhappy Jews, who were left wondering when they would be asked just how Jewish they are and how long Jewishness has been in their family and when it might be expected to be extinguished from their family.

The New York Times predicts that the term “Islamic fascists,” having proved oh-so-unpopular, will no longer emanate from Bush’s mouth.

By Labor Day, Islamic fascists and Islamo-fascism were the hot new conservative buzzwords.

And then, just as suddenly, they were gone — at least from the president’s lips.

“The debate that we wanted to launch was about an ideological struggle against an enemy that has very specific plans, ambitions and aspirations, much like movements of the past, like fascism and Nazism,” said Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president. Addressing the term Islamic fascists, Mr. Bartlett said, “I’m sure he’ll use it again.”

But it seems unlikely Mr. Bush will use it again, given the outcry it provoked.

Muslims, both here and in other countries, were deeply offended.

We’ll see about where Mr. Bush goes with the term “Islamic fascism,” which gets across the message that there’s an ideology behind the terrorists who are threatening our way of life (a notion that progressives would rather not engage, because it leaves them with no peaceful options for dealing with terrorism).

Meanwhile, our pop culture reliably takes on politics—sooner or later. In this case sooner: an ad agency has caused an uproar by creating a radio spot for a car dealership that is said to be declaring a “jihad on the auto market.”

A car dealership’s tongue-in-cheek radio advertisement declaring “a jihad on the auto market,” will not be changed, the company said.

The ad has drawn criticism that its content is offensive to Muslims.

Several stations rejected the spot from Dennis Mitsubishi, which boasts sales representatives wearing “burqas” — the head-to-toe traditional dress for some Islamic women — will sell vehicles that can “comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back.”

Jihad is a holy war waged by Muslims in defence of Islam.

“We firmly believe the ad does not in any way disrespect any religion or culture, but we feel, I guess, that maybe poking a little fun at radical extremists is fair game,” dealership president Keith Dennis said.

“It was our intention to craft something around some of the buzzwords of the day and give everyone a good chuckle and be a little bit of a tension reliever.”

Good luck with that!