By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
We haven't done the poll, but our guess is that most Americans recognize the name Katie Couric.
And they wouldn't know Amy Goodman from a hole in the wall.
NBC Today Show co-anchor Katie Couric said this morning that she is leaving the show to become the anchor for the CBS Evening News.
Amy Goodman is the anchor of the award winning one-hour television and radio news program, Democracy Now.
Couric gets more ink than Goodman in the mainstream press.
That's because Couric plays by the rules of the game.
Goodman doesn't.
Couric has been with the Today Show for 15 years.
She has also been a contributing anchor for Dateline NBC.
For most of her professional life, Couric has been a celebrity interviewer and stenographer to power.
According to the Today Show web site, she has interviewed "a panoply of world leaders, national political figures, writers, actors and pop culture icons."
Some of her groundbreaking political interviews have been fawning sycophantic things with:
George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Jennifer Wilbanks ("whose disappearance just before her wedding day created a nationwide sensation, earning her the moniker "runaway bride"), Tricia Meili -- the Central Park Jogger, John F. Kennedy, Jr. John and Patsy Ramsey about the death of their daughter, JonBenet,
Amy Goodman has reported more substantive news in one year that Couric has reported on in a lifetime.
Just last week, Democracy Now ran a two part interview with Noam Chomsky about his new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.
Would Couric run a debate on the Israeli/Palestinian issue between Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, as Goodman did earlier this year?
Would Couric interview Norman Finkelstein on the same?
Would she know who Norman Finkelstein is?
Would Couric know Al Lewis as anything more than Grandpa on the Munsters?
Or would she dare interview him on his radical political philosophy, as Goodman did before Grandpa Al died earlier this year?
Would Couric know about the 1991 massacre of 271 peaceful protesters in Dili, East Timor by Indonesia forces?
Goodman was there with the protesters, was beaten, but survived.
If Katie Couric were interviewing Vanessa Redgrave, would the conversation be dominated by the death by Israeli bulldozer of peace activist Rachel Corrie -- as was Goodman's interview last month of Redgrave?
Would Couric dare interview the now untouchable Harry Belafonte -- after he called the war criminal a war criminal?
Would Couric travel to Nigeria -- as Goodman did -- to document Chevron's complicity with the Nigerian military in putting down an indigenous revolt?
Couric is going to CBS News, the old stomping ground of Edward R. Murrow.
The recently released movie of Murrow -- Good Night and Good Luck -- purports to be how Murrow stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunts.
But the movie is actually about the sacrifice of television news at the altar of corporate commercialism.
Murrow had slim hopes for television.
He could see the writing on the wall.
As movie reviewer John Powers put it, the movie's real theme is "the inherent debasement of mass news in a commercial culture, a process so powerful that even brave individuals can't stop it."
"You see, news is a product that must be able to pay for itself," Powers said on NPR's Fresh Air. "In practice, that means getting ratings, finding corporate sponsors and newsmen becoming purveyors of fluff, and that's precisely what we see happening in the film. Murrow's show 'See It Now' has to fret about alienating its sponsor, Alcoa, when it goes after McCarthy, and Murrow himself must placate CBS by hosting the celebrity interview show 'Person to Person.'"
Powers says that "like it or not, the age of infotainment was in the cards from the very beginning."
"And for all his highfalutin speeches about how television can educate, illuminate and inspire, Murrow could do nothing to slow it down," Power said. "Seeing it now, his famed anti-McCarthy broadcast looks less like the flowering of a golden age than a blip on the radar of packaged commercial news, rather like Shepard Smith and Anderson Cooper unexpectedly exploding with anger during Hurricane Katrina before returning to their usual sleek selves."
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are what Edward Murrow professed television could become.
Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News represent what he feared it would become.
Good night.
Good luck to Amy Goodman and Democracy Now.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org>. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press).
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