CBS On the Prowl for New Evening News Anchor

With Dan Rather enjoying early retirement, CBS continues to ponder how to repackage their news programming in a way that will help them rise up from the non-cable news cellar. The man or woman they choose as chief anchor and news director will play a major role in whether the new news format will succeed or fail.

Tonight, Hugh Hewitt has challenged the blogosphere to suggest names of people who might be a good pick to represent the new-and-hopefully-improved public image of CBS News.

After reading Hugh's request my thoughts moved as follows:

1. CBS's major problem is integrity and trust. Until that is restored it doesn't matter what sort of bells and whistles they produce.

2. Integrity and trust must be restored immediately by someone already regarded as established and reliable. This would rule out a young, up-and-coming man or woman who, over a span of years might create such trust but would not generate any buzz or confidence at the outset.

3. The person must be immediately recognizable by a large number of Americans, both within and outside of the corridors of power.

4. The person must have well-established and respected relationships with both political leaders and the world news media, including press, radio and television.

5. It should not particularly matter whether the person's personal biases are considered to be "liberal," "conservative," "middle-of-the-road" or "neutral" so long as the personal bias is open and honest, the person is not considered "radical" and does not come with a track record of having had active leadership in a major partisan political campaign or is strongly associated with public service to one particular political party.

6. The person's primary character values must demonstrably be known and shown to include "fairness."

7. While personal experience in the area of "blogging" would not be necessary, a healthy respect and understanding of the dynamics and culture of the growing assimilation, digestion, regurgitation, repackaging and dissemination of news and information on the internet would be both vital and mandatory.

8. As mentioned above, the immediate need for CBS is to regain its reputation for integrity, trustworthiness and fairness. An older, experienced person could bring that image back quickly without necessarily remaining in that role forever. As soon as the reputation of the network has been redeemed that person could then step down, either completely or into the "special reporter" or "commentator" role, allowing one or more newer faces to enter the position and carry the momentum along for possibly an entire generation of new viewers.

9. Curiously, there are a number of good people who could fit this description quite well. But the one that immediately popped into my mind is the one I will run with.

I propose that CBS contract and sign Bob Woodward from the Washington Post, to serve as CBS News Director and Evening News Anchor during this period of rebuilding and restructuring.
Bob Woodward has a proven record of keeping up with the cultural and technological trends of the day so would be able to endorse and understand the necessary innovations that CBS will have to consider to be a cutting edge news source once again.

Bob Woodward, despite having a clear liberal bias, is widely viewed to be "fair" by a broad spectrum of political leaders on both sides of the aisle.

Although not necessarily the most reliable source on the web, Wikipedia's article on Bob Woodward does offer this interesting, insightful and relevant paragraph:

Woodward is widely regarded as one of the top reporters of the last half-century, and has earned trust and accolades from government officials and journalists of all political persuasions. In 2003, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Woodward "the most celebrated journalist of our age." The Weekly Standard called him "the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever." And in 2004 Bob Schieffer of CBS News said "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time."

Woodward presents a confident, photogenic on-screen image and is well-spoken both in prepared presentations as well as in impromptu conversation. He is also known to seek out the hard, central truth of a story without bending or twisting the results to conform to some predetermined reality.

I could go on with many other positive points but will assert some self-control and stop. While there are also many negatives (the largest of which is his personal inseparability from the Watergate matter) I cannot imagine another journalist of his caliber who could accomplish the goals I have listed above.

In any case, I sincerely hope and pray that CBS chooses well. The more honest, fair and balanced news sources we have, the better off we will be.