Not quite fact, not quite fiction, it's neither here nor there. But it's all over cable news.
By JACQUES STEINBERG
JUST as the most-discussed coverage of the 2004 presidential election was by a fake-news outlet - "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central - the pundit who probably drew the most attention in 2005 was only playing one on TV: Stephen Colbert, who presides over a "Daily Show" spinoff, "The Colbert Report."
In his debut, on Oct. 17, Mr. Colbert not only gave the show's title a faux-French flourish - cole-BEAR ruh-PORE - but also added a made-up word to the lexicon of political journalism. It was "truthiness," which Mr. Colbert intended as a summation of what he sees as the guiding ethos of the loudest commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
"Truthiness is sort of what you want to be true, as opposed to what the facts support," Mr. Colbert said in a recent interview. "Truthiness is a truth larger than the facts that would comprise it - if you cared about facts, which you don't, if you care about truthiness."
The success of Mr. Colbert's program (its eight-week tryout was quickly extended to a year) came in a year of sizable changes in real broadcast news, most notably among the network evening newscasts.
By Dec. 2, when Brian Williams celebrated his first anniversary in Tom Brokaw's old chair on "NBC Nightly News," Dan Rather had stepped down as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" after nearly a quarter-century, and Peter Jennings of ABC had died of lung cancer, also after nearly a quarter-century as anchor. Last month, Ted Koppel left the ABC program "Nightline," after more than a quarter-century as its host.
While CBS struggled to reinvent the evening news post-Rather, considering alternatives to the "voice of God" format, ABC forged ahead. It named three reporters to replace Mr. Koppel and two anchors to replace Mr. Jennings.
The biggest roster change on cable news probably came at CNN, which replaced Aaron Brown, a no-nonsense newsman, with Anderson Cooper, who drew attention not only for his marathon coverage of Hurricane Katrina but also for a fashion-style portrait in Maxim magazine.
"I think Anderson needs another disaster," Mr. Colbert said. "I think the heat is off his sewage-soaked trousers."
"He needs to be deeply moved by someone else's misfortune," he said. "Fast."
Mr. Colbert quickly added that Mr. Cooper had been his favorite guest on "The Colbert Report."
