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April 05, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - April 5

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE COURIC, TV ANCHOR: I know it's the worst kept secret in America but I am going to be working on the "CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes" and I'm very excited about it but I can't tell you how much I am going to miss everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Perky Katie Couric leaves morning television where she has been a very big star and heads for the "CBS Evening News" anchor chair where she will succeed Bob Schieffer in the job once held by the venerable Walter Cronkite.

Some analytical observations now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the "Weekly Standard," Juan Williams, senior correspondent of National Public Radio and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News contributors all.

Well, what about this, Charles? What do you make of this change? Is this likely to succeed, does it tell us a lot about the state of network news, what?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, it tells us how it's in decline and how it's softening. I think we know that it's in decline from the ratings. I think it's less serious than it was in the past, but also this is less of a cultural event. This is a media event. She may have success. I'm not so sure she will, but her -- her going into that chair I think is less important because the "Evening News" is less important. And not just because its numbers are obviously down.

It's because 30 years ago when it had a monopoly it had a monopoly of the truth. When it spoke it said what history had occurred on that day. It spoke about facts. I once heard a reporter from the "Wall Street Journal" talking about in the old days we didn't have these divisions among us because we could agree on what the news was.

Which she meant "The New York Times" and "The Evening News." Well, it's not as if there is one history or one news. We now have dissident networks like Fox and others and the bloggers so that what we have now is other avenues of saying what actually happened. And in the absence of that oracular voice, which you had with Cronkite and all the others, whether she's in the anchor chair, Katie Couric or somebody else, is a far less important issue than it would have been 30 years ago, even far less important when Barbara Walters took over as co-chair for ABC in the early `70s, I think.

HUME: That was in the mid `70s, yeah. What about it Juan? Do you think it will work? Will she succeed in that chair? Does the personality that she has projected with such appeal to so many people on morning television carry over?

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: I think she's a very appealing character. But I don't think she's the voice of God to pick up on Charles' image there, the oracular voice of Walter Cronkite, and that's the way it is.

I think what she can do though is possibly bring in a new generation. She will change the demographic for CBS so you'll get a younger viewer paying attention in the news and especially young women who are the most sought after demographic at all. Most of those news program draw pretty much people who are interested in older health issues and the advertisers, that's why it's failing. They still have a large audience, it's just not the audience the advertisers want.

HUME: Too much Preparation H commercials.

WILLIAMS: I don't want to go .

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Depends. I think it's a huge gamble for CBS. We all know why they are hiring her for the "CBS Evening News." It's because of the personality, this bubbly, girlish, appealing personality. She has star quality. She's not been hired because she has long experience as a news gatherer, as a reporter for all the things she's covered. And look at the guys she's replacing. You know Bob Schieffer well.

HUME: We all do.

BARNES: And before him Dan Rather were people with long reporting experience as television newsmen and they are bringing someone very, very different. I checked the backgrounds of these two co-anchors that ABC has hired.

And they are not Bob Schieffer or Dan Rather, but they have journalistic experience with affiliates, network affiliates around the country and then as network correspondents. They've done a lot. And then there's the part that you know about, Brit, that the anchors are not just traditionally have not just been news readers, as we have in other countries. They're managing editors. That's your title, managing editor.

HUME: She will have that title.

BARNES: She will have that title. A managing editor is someone who does decide, as Charles was talking about, who decides what the news is, what's the important stuff, somebody with very good news judgment, which you can develop over the years. I'm not sure the best place to develop that, however, is the "Today" show. So I think it's a huge gamble for CBS. May work, may not.

WILLIAMS: That's the thing now. I think we've gone toward the celebrity news culture. And I think that's what this is about. Katie Couric is known for soft interviews. She's not known for being on the cutting edge, asking the questions that puts people on the spot. And people are nervous and you get that kind of dynamic television -- Sorry?

BARNES: You are putting it mildly.

WILLIAMS: All right.

KRAUTHAMMER: It's not even about news anymore. It's more about features.

HUME: Correct.

Let's raise another issue here. And that is this. It's pretty clear that the success of Fox News and other organizations has highlighted that there is a big chunk of the news audience that was disaffected of what they're getting from network news, which is an audience presumably available to one of the network newscasts that reached out to it.

Does Katie Couric do anything to reach out to people who thought that network news was simply too liberal?

KRAUTHAMMER: No.

BARNES: No.

KRAUTHAMMER: I think she is reaching out, I suspect, in the minds of people who hire her, to people who are less interested in the news at night because you get it elsewhere all day long on the Internet, etc, and interested in features and cultural ideas, stuff like that.

I think hard news is has sort of evolved out of that time slot. It's not exactly what it was 30 years ago. Look, 30 years ago when Walter Cronkite said the war in Vietnam was lost, Lyndon Johnson thought it was over, imagine if Katie Couric said that about Iraq, if it would have a similar effect on the president? Of course not.

HUME: Next up with the panel, immigration reform tied in knots in the Senate. Any way out? And what about Cardinal Mahoney? Both topics when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRIST: The minority refuses to vote. They refuse to give us simple votes, up or down votes on issues that we can debate on the floor that we're ready to debate. The other side of the aisle is refusing to govern. That's why we came to the United States Senate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, Senator Frist is frustrated and perhaps understandably so. He and his Republican counterparts are trying to amend a measure - an immigration reform measure on the Senate floor into a shape where they think they can get a majority of Senate votes to pass it. And the Democrats, content, apparently, to see the issue remain and not be resolved by legislation are in the way of this. What's going on here, Fred?

BARNES: Well, I think what Republicans want, they want al that's amendments so they can attract the majority of the Republicans to vote for it. In the Senate. And then send the bill. It will be a milder bill then the one that came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and sent it to conference with the House and the House will actually .

HUME: House passed a crack down. Tough crackdown.

BARNES: Tough crackdown, no guest worker program, no earned citizenship for the 11 million or 12 million illegal immigrants who are already here in the United States. And many House members have said, we won't even go to a conference if they send us a some liberal bill, more liberal bill like the one that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. So Republicans want to do is to tone down that bill, get the majority of Republicans to vote for in the Senate, the majority is not for it now, send it to conference and hope that bill will attract the Republicans from the House and then they can put together a final compromise.

Harry Reid says no to that. He likes the bill that came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A majority of Democrats will support that bill. He thinks it's just fine. He doesn't want to see the change. So he's used this tactic of denying unanimous content and Republicans don't know what to do to thwart him.

WILLIAMS: Well, the question is, do you expect the Democrats help the Republicans mend the divide in the Republican Party over this immigration issue? And the answer is not in the Democrats' interest.

The bill -- everybody's bill has border security in it. Everybody thinks we got to do a better job of protecting the borders. The question is, do you favor a guest worker plan as the White House does? Or do you think that a guest worker plan is just an invitation to continued flow of illegal immigrants into society?

Democrats say you need something of a kind but you certainly need a route to permanent residency and the Republicans who just can't get their house together on this issue and that's why they want to make the bill into a Christmas tree, fill up all these amendments and possibilities. That's - and I don't think that's the Democrats' business.

KRAUTHAMMER: I don't agree that everybody agrees on the fact that you got to have a tighter border security. The House passed a draconian security bill, which I support in terms of how it controls the border. The idea that you can't control it, I think is wrong. You can build a fence. And if you have to, you build a second and a third and you build a road between and you patrol it.

After all, not a lot of North Koreans have entered South Korea. We have a fence up there and it works. It can work. And the reason I think that is absolutely critical is that if you get a majority of Americans who believe that we actually will control the border and stop the river of immigrants and turn it into a trickle, it's not going to be perfect but it could be extremely effective, then you can get a huge shift in public opinion on how to handle the 11 million left behind.

If the legacy immigrants - I think people will say, OK, if this is going to be the last wave of immigrants, let's accept them. I would be radical in giving all of them amnesty if and when and after we demonstrate that it will be the last wave by actually shutting the border.

HUME: Do you think a bill will pass this time?

KRAUTHAMMER: No.

HUME: What about you, Juan?

WILLIAMS: I think a bill will pass and this very quickly. Let me say a fence is like a wild dream, and I don't think - it's impractical. More than 40 percent of the illegal immigrants who come in don't in through fence, they come in boats, airplanes.

BARNES: The fence is in urban areas, it's not one continues fence. Right now it looks bad, no bill.

HUME: You think no bill?

BARNES: Right now.

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