Abc Evening News

Weiner story lets new CBS anchor carve path

If CBS anchor Scott Pelley succeeds in creating an evening newscast that's a clear alternative to his rivals, Rep. Anthony Weiner may someday be seen as the coal mine's canary.

During Pelley's first week, the "CBS Evening News" devoted less than a third of the time to the sexting episode that has put the New York Democrat's political career in jeopardy than either NBC's "Nightly News" or ABC's "World News."

Andrew Tyndall, a consultant whose ADT Research logs the content of news broadcasts each night, noted that Pelley had "kept to the hard news high ground" in choices on the Weiner story. From the on-set recreation of a map that used to hang behind Walter Cronkite to resurrection of theme music that played when Dan Rather was anchor, Pelley's first broadcasts have sent welcoming messages to old-time news traditionalists.

Weiner's June 6 admission that he lied when first denying that he had sent lewd photographs to Twitter followers coincided with Pelley's first night as replacement for Katie Couric. The Weiner story led NBC's top-rated "Nightly News" that evening, yet Pelley did not get to it until after the first commercial break and reports about Afghanistan and Iraq.

The next night, ABC's Jonathan Karl had a "World News" report exceeding three minutes that talked about Republican calls for Weiner's resignation and addressed the question of what happens when private behavior becomes a public issue. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell also reported on "Nightly News" about Republicans on the attack. CBS did not mention the story.

A Claire Shipman report on "World News" on Wednesday stretched over two minutes, focusing on the pregnancy of Weiner's wife. O'Donnell talked primarily about the pregnancy in her "Nightly News" report.

Again, Pelley steered clear of the story.

Last week, NBC's "Nightly News" spent a total of 8 minutes, 54 seconds on the Weiner story, according to the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism. ABC devoted 8:16 to Weiner, while CBS spent 2:33 on the story, Pew researchers found.

"The message of last week could be reclaiming CBS as a more serious-minded news organization," said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew center's journalism project. He cautioned, though, that it could be risky to draw conclusions from such a short period. Experts like Tyndall have contended that CBS had a strong hard news focus even before Couric left.

It's About TV: The ABC Evening News, circa 1969-1970

Take these promo pieces for the ABC Evening News. Many of you probably haven't seen them before; not many people watched the evening news on ABC back in the day. The two news giants, NBC and CBS, had dominated coverage for years, with NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley leading the way up through the mid-60s, and Walter Cronkite steering CBS into first place by the end of the decade. fame) anchored the news up to 1960; Ron Cochrane was there through JFK's assassination; Peter Jennings, at 26, became the anchor in 1965, and was still there when the 15-minute broadcast expanded to a half-hour in 1967 (three years after the other two networks had done so). Bob Young, Frank Reynolds, and Howard K. Smith followed.  When Chet Huntley retired from NBC in 1970, ABC must have thought they had an opportunity to make inroads, and they hired Harry Reasoner away from CBS.  Later, they would team Reasoner with Barbara Walters in a disasterous match, before finally striking gold in the late 70s when Roone Arledge came from the sports side to take command. The point here is not just to take a look back, although that's always a lot of fun (and a great timewaster). But look at the headlines that the 1969 clip uses: Congress and taxes are right at the top; for Vietnam and Cambodia, you can substitute Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel and Egypt are still in the news. Back then "Liberation" stood for women's lib, but today it could be gay marriage. The USSR is called Russia today, but they still dominate world affairs, as does China with the world economy. The Mideast is still a complete mess, "Ecology" is now the environment and it's even bigger than it was then, and how many predicted abortion would become as dominant as it is today? The economy, Holy War, politics - the whole friggin' thing is still the same! Some of the old issues have disappeared, replaced by new ones, but what's sobering is that for the most part we're still fighting the same battles we were fighting 40 years ago. That's not really meant to sound depressing. What it really means is that history is what it is, as is human nature. The danger is that utopians try to tell us that the world's problems, or at least some of them, can be solved, when history tells us they probably can't. Lyndon Johnson thought he could wipe out poverty in ten years, Richard Nixon declared the economy could be managed to ensure continued growth, Jimmy Carter tried to bring peace to the Mideast in our time.

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