In Bill Carter’s lengthy NYT story today about Katie Couric’s (and CBS’s) behind-the-scenes game-playing to get the network a debate, there is one voice that is never heard from.

That’s the journo somewhere in CBS News saying, “Great Jesus Christ; it has come to the point where we’re going around begging to host a debate? A primary debate?!?”

CBS News, of course, was a fairly significant new operation, several decades ago. (The idea that broadcast news organizations are in the same league with the top-level print leviathans is quaint, but most people feel it was a serious outfit.) What happened next is complicated, but basically, the rise of cable news changed the world, MTV bought it, and then the world changed again.

As cost-cutting and collapsing internal standards took their toll, its evening news program drifted. The network’s response was to take a soft news celebrity face and try to skate for a few more years on fluff. That hasn’t worked so well: Its nightly news ratings are generally about 75 percent of those of NBC. By all accounts Couric’s enormous salary sucks cash out of the newsroom, and since the network doesn’t have a cable network its back-of-the-broadcast costs are going to remain high.

The coverage the broadcast news organizations get in the journalism world far outstrips their importance. “Eight million viewers–that’s a lot,” someone will say, roughly, of NBC’s (or ABC’s) nightly viewers. I hate to play the “seniors don’t count” card, but actual viewership in the 25 to 54 demographic is less than a third of that for all the networks, and I think there aren’t too many folks under 25 tuning in to see Couric.

For reasons I’ve written about before, I don’t take Couric seriously as a newsperson, and apparently few others do as well. Now the network is so desperate that we’re seeing new erosions of standards. The spectacle of the person who sits in a nightly broadcasts news anchor seat so desperate for ratings that she personally calls the campaigns of political figures and twists arms to get a debate–as the Times detailed–is something out of a Paddy Chayefsky script.

Beyond that, in the event, what possible argument can she make? “I’ll be nice to you?” “I’ll be mean to the other guy?” “I’ll be nice to you if you’re president?” “CBS News will remember this?” Is there a single thing Couric could say that wouldn’t on its face compromise her objectivity and that of her network? It’s the equivalent of calling up Obama and asking him to make an appearance at her daughter’s birthday party. There’s nothing in it for him at all; but how could he refuse?