Kurtz's 'Reality' bites - and it shouldn't
November 4, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN delfman@suntimes.com
Howard Kurtz gave his new book the wrong title. Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War is really about The First Inconsequential Television News War, since it's obsessed with the current TV news anchors.
Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams and Katie Couric earn certain merits. But the last Great TV News War starred Peter Jennings vs. Tom Brokaw vs. Dan Rather. Or Bill Clinton vs. Fox News.
As Kurtz points out, the winning newscast on a given night draws 8 million viewers. A few Wednesdays ago, NBC's "Deal or No Deal" barely made the prime time Top 20 with a mere 12.4 million viewers.
In other words, who cares this much about these anchors? Especially since Kurtz thinks it's terrible that just about the only people still watching are political junkies and dying old ladies?
Oh, wait. We're supposed to care about the quality of TV news. Oh, right. Well, here's Kurtz, who's probably America's most exposed media critic (in the Washington Post and on CNN), but he doesn't include his own extended firsthand critique of the anchors until he gets to the Epilogue on page 427! He then criticizes them for not using their power more often to make risky social statements -- at the same time Kurtz is not issuing many risky statements about the anchors or the evening news.
Worse still, this eight-page epilogue credits Gibson, Williams and Couric for being "as good as any in the past," and it's a good thing they're national hand-holders -- even though they sensationalize "rip 'n' read" stories from the New York Times. Huh? What? Can you repeat that in my good ear?
Kurtz's holding back on his judgments makes no sense. He spends the first 426 pages reciting the daily machinations of the anchors and their bosses. The style is thus: Kurtz interviewed them, then he wrote up the thoughts from their egotistical heads in omnipotent third person.
As with Tom Wolfe's style, you always know you're actually reading the words these people told him, minus newspapery attributions of "he said" and "she said."
While Kurtz goes into 10,000 emotionless outlines of minutiae, he lets you the reader draw conclusions about the players. Hello?! You are Howard Kurtz. Don't you know who you are? You are on the witness stand. Testify, already.
To put it bluntly, Reality Show is a snooze for no good reason other than he doesn't wish to seriously slam his fellow TV stars and their bosses. Either that, or he doesn't believe they deserve wrath or indignation.
The reason I'm being so hard on Reality Show is: A) it bored me unmercilessly; B) Kurtz squandered a great opportunity to use his weight to file serious grievances about TV news; C) each chapter reads like the lighthearted profile features he complains are filling up TV news, and D) there's not one reference to PBS or Web sites such as Wonkette, and barely any to CNN, Fox and DailyKos.com, so contextual pressures from other information sources is lacking.
Kurtz has plenty of material he could have riffed on. Two little moments in particular are appalling -- events that should be journalistic scandals.
Worst of all: CBS's crack Iraq reporter Lara Logan tried filing a serious story featuring graphic video of various deaths on a day of war, but producer Rome Hartman wouldn't run it, because it was too "raw" for him. Aww, poor baby Rome didn't want to report THE NEWS because it was REAL and INFORMATIVE like it's supposed to be.
Logan was, however, asked to do an upbeat feature story about women soldiers who distracted themselves by "keeping cyber-pets online."
"I would rather stick needles in my eyes than spend one second of my time on that story," she e-mailed her boss.
Maybe Logan should have written this book.
Second-worst of all: When Couric was at the "Today" show, NBC President Bob Wright pressed Couric to be softer (after she asked Condoleezza Rice hard questions) by forwarding one -- ONE -- nasty reader complaint to her.
Aww, big baby Bob Wright didn't want a journalist to do journalism for fear of insulting a single Republican viewer while millions of others did not complain.
How could Kurtz let these bits of his reporting go into Reality Show without weighing in intensely, or blowing them into full-on chapters unto themselves? These are exactly the kinds of decisions that are destroying TV news, which is supposed to be a big topic of the book.
As for his writing, there's no compelling voice in Kurtz. No poetry. No prose. Just fact, fact, fact. All the President's Men was free of eloquence, too, but it was about a most serious thing. Reality Show is about TV anchors. Not so grave.
If you believe everything in it, you see three anchors with small but discernible differences in news judgment. Williams is sharper than he's been given credit for, though he's too sensitive to criticism from viewers and politicians. Gibson honors Peter Jennings' legacy with his presence; his weakness is talking too diplomatically with politicians, using such phrases as "I mean no disrespect in this"; and thin-skinned, "shell shocked" Katie "Bite Me" Couric could be a solid anchor in 10 years if she doesn't quit or get canned by 2009.
All of them should stop bending over backward to snap photos with politicians and giving into their stupid on-the-record and off-the-record interview "gets" and "gotchas." "Gets" and "gotchas" are good for internal crowing among journalists. Few others care or notice. In the meantime, TV journalists are selling their souls for "exclusives" and presidential access, which usually only serves the interests of politicians.
But Kurtz mostly muzzles his own such findings. For instance, he portrays NBC's David Gregory as a respectfully demanding White House Press Corps reporter. Very true, but Kurtz never tsk-tsks Gregory for dancing on stage with Karl Rove at a press event last winter.
To glean such analysis from Reality Show takes suffering through chapters that read like long Wikipedia entries regarding tidbits which, oftentimes, were already reported these past few years.
So, if I ever want to read this stuff again, I'll wait for Wikipedia volunteers to steal the best parts and post them online. As Kurtz keeps insisting, the Web is where the action is now, anyway.
Doug Elfman is the Sun-Times TV critic.
REALITY SHOW
INSIDE THE LAST GREAT TELEVISION NEWS WAR
By Howard Kurtz
Free Press, 480 pages, $26
BY DOUG ELFMAN delfman@suntimes.com
Howard Kurtz gave his new book the wrong title. Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War is really about The First Inconsequential Television News War, since it's obsessed with the current TV news anchors.
Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams and Katie Couric earn certain merits. But the last Great TV News War starred Peter Jennings vs. Tom Brokaw vs. Dan Rather. Or Bill Clinton vs. Fox News.
As Kurtz points out, the winning newscast on a given night draws 8 million viewers. A few Wednesdays ago, NBC's "Deal or No Deal" barely made the prime time Top 20 with a mere 12.4 million viewers.
In other words, who cares this much about these anchors? Especially since Kurtz thinks it's terrible that just about the only people still watching are political junkies and dying old ladies?
Oh, wait. We're supposed to care about the quality of TV news. Oh, right. Well, here's Kurtz, who's probably America's most exposed media critic (in the Washington Post and on CNN), but he doesn't include his own extended firsthand critique of the anchors until he gets to the Epilogue on page 427! He then criticizes them for not using their power more often to make risky social statements -- at the same time Kurtz is not issuing many risky statements about the anchors or the evening news.
Worse still, this eight-page epilogue credits Gibson, Williams and Couric for being "as good as any in the past," and it's a good thing they're national hand-holders -- even though they sensationalize "rip 'n' read" stories from the New York Times. Huh? What? Can you repeat that in my good ear?
Kurtz's holding back on his judgments makes no sense. He spends the first 426 pages reciting the daily machinations of the anchors and their bosses. The style is thus: Kurtz interviewed them, then he wrote up the thoughts from their egotistical heads in omnipotent third person.
As with Tom Wolfe's style, you always know you're actually reading the words these people told him, minus newspapery attributions of "he said" and "she said."
While Kurtz goes into 10,000 emotionless outlines of minutiae, he lets you the reader draw conclusions about the players. Hello?! You are Howard Kurtz. Don't you know who you are? You are on the witness stand. Testify, already.
To put it bluntly, Reality Show is a snooze for no good reason other than he doesn't wish to seriously slam his fellow TV stars and their bosses. Either that, or he doesn't believe they deserve wrath or indignation.
The reason I'm being so hard on Reality Show is: A) it bored me unmercilessly; B) Kurtz squandered a great opportunity to use his weight to file serious grievances about TV news; C) each chapter reads like the lighthearted profile features he complains are filling up TV news, and D) there's not one reference to PBS or Web sites such as Wonkette, and barely any to CNN, Fox and DailyKos.com, so contextual pressures from other information sources is lacking.
Kurtz has plenty of material he could have riffed on. Two little moments in particular are appalling -- events that should be journalistic scandals.
Worst of all: CBS's crack Iraq reporter Lara Logan tried filing a serious story featuring graphic video of various deaths on a day of war, but producer Rome Hartman wouldn't run it, because it was too "raw" for him. Aww, poor baby Rome didn't want to report THE NEWS because it was REAL and INFORMATIVE like it's supposed to be.
Logan was, however, asked to do an upbeat feature story about women soldiers who distracted themselves by "keeping cyber-pets online."
"I would rather stick needles in my eyes than spend one second of my time on that story," she e-mailed her boss.
Maybe Logan should have written this book.
Second-worst of all: When Couric was at the "Today" show, NBC President Bob Wright pressed Couric to be softer (after she asked Condoleezza Rice hard questions) by forwarding one -- ONE -- nasty reader complaint to her.
Aww, big baby Bob Wright didn't want a journalist to do journalism for fear of insulting a single Republican viewer while millions of others did not complain.
How could Kurtz let these bits of his reporting go into Reality Show without weighing in intensely, or blowing them into full-on chapters unto themselves? These are exactly the kinds of decisions that are destroying TV news, which is supposed to be a big topic of the book.
As for his writing, there's no compelling voice in Kurtz. No poetry. No prose. Just fact, fact, fact. All the President's Men was free of eloquence, too, but it was about a most serious thing. Reality Show is about TV anchors. Not so grave.
If you believe everything in it, you see three anchors with small but discernible differences in news judgment. Williams is sharper than he's been given credit for, though he's too sensitive to criticism from viewers and politicians. Gibson honors Peter Jennings' legacy with his presence; his weakness is talking too diplomatically with politicians, using such phrases as "I mean no disrespect in this"; and thin-skinned, "shell shocked" Katie "Bite Me" Couric could be a solid anchor in 10 years if she doesn't quit or get canned by 2009.
All of them should stop bending over backward to snap photos with politicians and giving into their stupid on-the-record and off-the-record interview "gets" and "gotchas." "Gets" and "gotchas" are good for internal crowing among journalists. Few others care or notice. In the meantime, TV journalists are selling their souls for "exclusives" and presidential access, which usually only serves the interests of politicians.
But Kurtz mostly muzzles his own such findings. For instance, he portrays NBC's David Gregory as a respectfully demanding White House Press Corps reporter. Very true, but Kurtz never tsk-tsks Gregory for dancing on stage with Karl Rove at a press event last winter.
To glean such analysis from Reality Show takes suffering through chapters that read like long Wikipedia entries regarding tidbits which, oftentimes, were already reported these past few years.
So, if I ever want to read this stuff again, I'll wait for Wikipedia volunteers to steal the best parts and post them online. As Kurtz keeps insisting, the Web is where the action is now, anyway.
Doug Elfman is the Sun-Times TV critic.
REALITY SHOW
INSIDE THE LAST GREAT TELEVISION NEWS WAR
By Howard Kurtz
Free Press, 480 pages, $26
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