Reality Check

As an alumnus of CBS News, I still enjoy a frisson of familial pride when CBS aces a story, or otherwise covers itself with journalistic glory. Such was not the case last week, however, when CBS began airing a promo claiming to have "invented original reporting on television," a claim so overweeningly bogus that the frisson it produced was one of squirming embarrassment.

Prominently featured in the promo were clips from "60 Minutes" and the "CBS Evening News", the accomplishments of whose producers and anchors over the years are legendary. Don Hewitt, Walter Cronkite, the Murrow team, and their ilk must have turned over in their graves at such a display of unwarranted hubris.

For an evenhanded take on the question read David Shedden of Poynter here, and, if you want to join me in a group cringe, see the offending promo here.

Fall Follies

We note that Congressional leaders have announced their appointments for the deficit-reduction "supercommittee." Is there anyone out there who actually believes that this bunch will produce anything of benefit to the electorate, or that they will not replicate the farcical dance attending the recent debt ceiling negotiations, winding up by delivering some further recovery-killing plan at the last moment in order to avoid even more toxic statutory cuts?

Punditville has until Thanksgiving to dine out on this story.