‘CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley is well-aware this his newscast is in third place —and he’s not a happy camper.
“I hate it,” he says emphatically. “It drives me crazy all day every day. It’s awful. CBS should be first, not third.
“But at least we’re a competitive third now,” he says. “We’re close to overtaking ABC in the [news demo]. Our headlights are in their rearview mirror.”
That’s a far cry from the newscast Pelley inherited from Katie Couric two years ago tonight. Back then, the “CBS Evening News” trailed “The NBC Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News” by very wide margins. While Pelley’s newscast still trails its competitors, it’s been slowly closing the gap, most notably among the “money” news demo of adults 25-54. It was the only network newscast to show a spike in that demo for the season — and Pelley thinks he knows why.
“What I think is what [CBS News chief] Jeff Fager told us two years ago — report the news in a good, hard-news broadcast and tell viewers about the dozen or so important things happening in the world.
“I think the audience has been starved for that,” he says. “There’s an enormous curiosity about why a network evening news broadcast like ours is up 1 million viewers over two years — which is counter to every trend we’ve seen in broadcast TV. Why? People are looking for a place they can get all the news they’re curious about in one small bite. They’re fleeing to quality and looking for a brand they can rely on.”
Pelley isn’t shy about criticizing his own profession — and his own newscast — for inaccurate reporting.
A few months back, he told a crowd at Quinnipiac College — in a video that went viral — that “We’re getting the big stories wrong, over and over again,” and referenced the “CBS Evening News’s” faulty reporting on the Newtown, Ct. school massacre (it mistakenly reported that the shooter’s mother worked at the school).
“One of the things I said in the speech is that, never before in human history, is more information available to more people and there’s bad information out there,” he says, mentioning social media. “That’s not to suggest that everything in social media is wrong — probably most of it is right — but the bloggers of the world who are sending out 20-character tweets aren’t steeped in the principles and mores of journalism.
“I think that in the headlong rush to get the story we’re getting it wrong too often, and that’s always been the case. “It’s not new. Social media throws a little gas on the fire and we start feeling pressure [to get a story] in the newsroom.
“That speech was a flashing yellow light that when we in the established media start chasing rumors in social media and report on them, we have to remember who we are and why we are — as the antidote to gossip.”