Couric's Critics

So the critics have weighed in on Katie Couric's introductory broadcast... and the results are overwhelmingly negative or mixed.

According to a survey by the Project of Excellence in Journalism, 79 percent of the reviews, taken mostly from daily newspapers, were either mixed or mostly negative. Out of 43 columns and commentaries evaluating Couric's first broadcast, 20 were mixed, 14 negative and nine positive.


"After an unprecedented buildup, the early verdict is in. A sampling of the nation’s television critics and online commentators finds that there is more criticism than praise - and more mixed reviews than anything - for Katie Couric’s feverishly anticipated debut as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” yesterday.
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In fairness to Couric, a good deal of the criticism was aimed less at her and more at the content – or lack thereof – in a program that included pictures of Tom Cruise’s and Katie Holmes’s baby daughter Suri and a segment in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock railed against political polarization while using Hulk Hogan video to make his point.(On a more superficial note, Couric’s wardrobe, a white blazer over a black skirt and top, also attracted its share of comment.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Storm wrote that “her presence actually gave weight to a blab-filled report that threatened to float away on a cloud of tepid air.”Writing for the online publication Salon, Heather Havrilesky asserted that “the broadcast hit its low point when Couric gushed over the first published pictures of Suri Cruise” and accused the new anchor of “sounding far more like Mary Hart than Tom Brokaw.”

Summing up the general sense among reviewers that Couric herself provided no particularly memorable or distinctive moments, Robert Bianco of USA Today ventured that “It’s hard to see how anything she did on the newscast could possibly have earned a strong reaction either way.” The Boston Globe’s Joanna Weiss echoed those sentiments, declaring the newscast to be largely “competent and safe.”

In a bad sign for network, the name of CBS news icon Edward Murrow – whose signature signoff was used to help close Couric’s first show – was invoked in some unflattering reviews. The Washington Post’s Tom Shales wrote that “Some people will say that including the image of Murrow on such a frothy, funsy broadcast as the Couric premier was sacrilege, and that Murrow is spinning in his grave.” Added Matt Zoller Seitz of the Newark Star-Ledger: “Now would normally be the time to evoke the ghost of Edward R. Murrow, but I won’t. He’s suffered enough.”

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