I am back. The daily blog is back. And today, we are going to launch a Friday feature at ZonTV in which we highlight some of the winners and sinners of the week in TV. Often they will be TV news people covering politics, because the bull's-eye for this blog is still that spot in American popular culture where TV and politics intersect.
This week, the choice was easy.
Tuesday, Sen. Tom Daschle withdrew from his nomination for secretary of Health and Human Services, and all three major networks had interviews pre-scheduled with President Barack Obama. As much as some haters of mainstream media and network news insist that ABC, NBC and CBS are all the same, there were distinct differences in tone and take among Katie Couric (CBS), Charles Gibson (ABC) and Brian Williams (NBC).
But the newsperson who performed best in holding Obama's feet to the fire over his three tax-challenged appointees worked for one of the cable channels. That would by CNN's John King (pictured above). More on him later.
THE WINNER: No one performed better than ABC's Charles Gibson who was in his best stern headmaster mode and challenged Obama on the hypocrisy of pledging reform, change and transparency, and then defending Timothy F. Geithner as worthy to be secretary of treasury despite failing to pay taxes back to 2001.
Here's Gibson putting it on the line, and I think he hit it just right in terms of challenging without being disrespectful.
THE SINNER: No one performed worse that NBC's Brian Williams in creating a context of victimization for Obama that all but absolved him of any responsibility. Here's Williams, blaming the culture of Washington, rather than Obama, for the withdrawn nominations of Daschle and Nancy Killefer (chief performance officer):
SINNER/WINNER: CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric also seemed to want to portray Obama as a victim of this thing called Washington, but in the end, she redeemed herself with tough and informed questions like this one that challenged the president as much as anything Gibson said:
COURIC: Meanwhile a former lobbyist for the defense-contracting firm Raytheon is slated to be the number two person at the Pentagon. During the course of the campaign, you spoke passionately about ethics reform and against lobbyists. So what happened? It gives people the impression you talk the talk during the campaign, but now you're in office, and you're not walking the walk.
John King wasn't part of the network rotation that had interviews with Obama on Tuesday, but no one has in TV news has pushed harder and more consistently than CNN's John King. The veteran correspondent and now Sunday-morning anchorman and host has been pressing Obama on the huge gap between campaign rhetoric and the reality of nominating someone like Geithner when almost everyone else on network and cable TV who didn't work for Fox was swooning.
On the premiere edition of his fast-paced and informative Sunday morning show, State of the Union, King challenged Obama on Geithner, and the then President-elect treated the CNN host like he was a cub reporter from the sticks who just didn't get what a trivial matter it was to have not paid some taxes for one of the only persons in the nation who could save the economy. To his credit, King remained polite, but never let up.
Last week on State of the Union while other Sunday morning hosts, taking their cues from their Senate guests, downplayed the grave ethical issues Daschle's behavior raised, King and a panel of CNN correspondents stayed the course. They did what journalists do – brought their listeners as much information, reaction and analysis about the matter as they could.
