Follow this link to The New York Times column by Russ Douthat (can that be his real name? Does it sound like doubt that?).

He analyzes the reasons for CNN’s falling ratings, claiming that in trying to have disinterested anchors present unbiased news, they are losing their audience. He thinks that Wolf Blitzer falls into the disinterested anchor category.  Maybe Wolf is disinterested, but I also think he is none too sharp.

I can’t decide if I quite buy his suggestions for real discussions between opposing points of view. Perhaps he is on to something.  What do you think?

He mentions William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, and Norman Mailer as examples of what might work.  He also mentions Jon Stewart as a good example.  He failed to mention Charlie Rose.

I might agree on William F. Buckley if you restrict the example to his early years.  At the end, William F. Buckley was no better than some of the people that Douthat decries.

I wonder if some good investigative journalism might give a boost to CNN?  I don’t fancy the kind of gotcha stories that 60 Minutes, Dateline, or Geraldo Rivera focus on. Perhaps a better example would be the kind that Bill Moyers does.

What I want to see on the news are anchors and reporters who are smarter than I am.  I don’t get what I want from reporters who don’t think to ask the obvious questions.  The ones who merely give you the “he says and she says”, or ask inane questions instead of meaty ones just don’t cut it with me.

What especially irks me are reporters who either pretend to be or are just some dumb regular person. Sometimes they like to act humble and claim they are incapable of understanding what they are reporting on.

I don’t need a reporter to tell me a subject is so complicated that the reporter can’t understand it.  If that is true, get someone who does understand to report on it.  If the reporter is bored by the repetition of a long political campaign, get someone who isn’t bored and boring.

The recent news that Caterpillar is taking a $100million dollar charge and AT&T is taking a $1billion charge because of changes in health care does not pertain to the current health care bill, as I understand it. This has to do with the Drug Insurance plan passed under George Bush.

Under that plan, subsidies and tax advantages were introduced to prevent companies like Caterpillar and AT&T from dropping their drug coverage. Those subsidies and tax write-offs are expiring, hence the accounting charges.

The accounting charges are just changes in the way companies have to account for future liabilities. There is no cash involved in the write-downs.

These are one time charges that the stock market regularly ignores in evaluating a company’s worth.

$1 billion sure sounds like a lot of money, but it turns out to be only a small part (0.6%) of AT&T’s market capitalization of $155.34billion.

That would lower AT&Ts stock price by $0.17 of its current $26.30 price if the stock market decided not to ignore one time charges like this.