• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 2, 2008

CBS chief executive Les Moonves didn't have any real breaking news stories to spill last week. And that's good.

At the same time, he wonders why we in the press have all this fascination with news, in particular, networks news divisions, when they bring in "point zero zero one percent" of a media company's revenues?

Moonves was talking about CBS News revenues -- more or less -- in this regard. He was ruminating about this -- albeit, briefly -- at a recent investor conference event. Much of this was pushed by the recent stories about Katie Couric's low ratings at the CBS Evening News.

Shouldn't there be bigger media stuff to look at? Hey, what about the outdoor advertising business?

He has a point. Network news divisions aren't what they were -- yet business journalists who cover TV pounce on these stories as if they drove all media business. News hasn't really been the face of TV networks for some time. We all know the TV news business has changed dramatically, with what cable TV networks and the Internet brings to the table.

That said, Moonves and CBS haven't helped their cause much by paying Couric a top=drawer $15 million a year, as part of a seemingly last-ditch effort to perk up the broadcast networks news division with some high-profile "casting."

But that doesn't mean big media companies aren't keeping an eye on things -- perhaps too much so. A former MSNBC journalist, now CNN reporter, says the corporate higher-ups at GE were putting pressure on her to spin more "patriotic" stories on the Iraq War and the Bush Administration handling of the war.

Turns out this reporter -- who was only freelance -- really had little contact with the bigwigs. That "corporate pressure" was really about how her pieces were edited and what stories her bosses put on the air or turned down.

All of which means the eyes of big media are always focused on TV news programming. It's just that we, as viewers, don't get all the angles. Everything has a point of view, and it's never the whole story .