ABSTRACT
The "CBS Evening News" of 1968 saw no problem with equating its perspective with that of the United States' war effort. The tone of CBS's '60s newscast was Olympian, even elitist, the voice of the Establishment. The "CBS Evening News" refused to condemn '60s radicals and Communists out of hand: Instead it sought them out, tried to understand their ideology and interrogated the flaws in their arguments. The changes that are obvious in the 1998 "CBS Evening News" are no recent arrivals. CBS News should not be criticized for the United States' good fortune in finding itself not at war, hot or cold, in 1998. CBS sells more than eight minutes of advertising to Madison Avenue and reserves another 40 seconds to promote its own programming. CBS, by addressing its viewers more as consumers to be courted, less as citizens to be informed, has changed the role of the anchor.
