Even before Katie Couric’s ascension to the anchor chair, CBS has maintained a storied past with the press. Part of it has to do with the tenure of chief mouthpiece Gil Schwartz, some to do with Katie’s personal publicist Matt Hiltzik. Today, we’re in one of those interesting cruxes where we’re witness to the spin machine at its finest: a mostly blowjob-y piece on one end, a hatchet job on the other.

Let’s start with the good news: Katie is hitting softballs with the Philadelphia Inquirer, answering the questions of Ellen Gray (and not, it’s quite worth mentioning, noted anti-Katie Inquirer TV scribe Gail Shister). Katie is in Philly, officially, to “help mark the official opening of CBS-owned KYW’s new high-definition studios at 15th and Spring Garden streets.” But she’s also in a familiar role, playing damage control, and given plenty of freedom to do so.

Statements like, “But it was always, I think, a pretty serious and hard-hitting newscast,” aren’t exactly challenged; Gray only “suggests” some things might not be as they appear.

But over at the New York Sun, CBS’s press machine looks tired, weary, and entirely ineffective.

Former Village Voice editor David Blum returns to the Sun’s pages with an op-ed about the network’s treatment of its Walter Cronkite special. Perhaps you didn’t see it, or even know it was airing last Friday because, as Blum argues, CBS delivered a “classic backhanded gesture” to its former news anchor: publicly celebrating Cronkite, while privately ridiculing him with a crap timeslot.

That’s been the network’s relationship with Cronkite ever since Dan Rather replaced him at the anchor desk; and look how CBS now treats Rather. It’s a a strong indicator, says Blum, of what’s happening at CBS now, and what’s to come.

It’s no surprise that Ms. Couric has yet to coin a consistent and engaging catchphrase to end her broadcast, since it shares nothing with the grand CBS News tradition that preceded it. The beauty of the ” CBS Evening News” came from the strength of its journalism — the rata-tat roll of first-rate reporters’ names and datelines at the top of the broadcast, and the presence of a former top foreign correspondent, Mr. Cronkite, behind a desk in a newsroom, not on a stage with a Hollywood composer’s score playing in the background. But after its cruel and inexplicable treatment of Mr. Cronkite for the last quarter-century, don’t expect CBS News to suddenly correct its Couric mistake. The network that has tastelessly attached the classic Murrow title “See It Now” to Ms. Couric’s broadcast has proved itself blind, yet again, to the errors of its ways.

And let’s not forget, a veritable contest was made out of Katie’s greeting, too, which resulted in Couric’s welcoming an aging generation of broadcast evening news watchers with “Hi everybody.” To be sure, she’s since switched it up to the more, ahem, formal, “Hello everyone.”

What was that about Murrow turning over in his grave?

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