I care about President Bush’s safety. So...

I care about President Bush’s safety. So I tuned in CBS Thursday morning in case “The Early Show” would be interrupting its pressing in-depth news coverage of “Survivor: The Australian Outback” for a 10-second bulletin about any more shootings at the White House.

Naturally I was relieved when hosts Bryant Gumbel and Jane Clayson kept talking nonstop about Kimmi, Jerri, Pagong and Ogakor.

All right, that’s hyperbole. But who better than CBS to appreciate overstatement these days after enlisting news programs on the network and stations it owns as cheerleaders for its new franchise series extending the ratings momentum of last year’s plain old “Survivor.”

Chauvinism in TV news didn’t surface first in 2001. Nor is CBS the only offender.

TV’s smelly tradition of using news programs to incestuously cross-promote entertainment shows is long and industrywide, most notably during February and other ratings-sweeps periods, when local advertising rates are set based on detailed counts of viewers. And network morning shows and local newscasts have always included fluff along with hard news.

Never more pervasively or absurdly, though, than in the present CBS campaign using all its resources to publicize its colossal new cash kangaroo.

Now on the network’s payroll, for instance, is “Survivor I” alumnus Gervase Peterson, who has appeared as a special news correspondent for “Survivor II” on such CBS properties as this city’s KCBS.

These days, the station of the dingoes.

Talk about priorities. On its 11 p.m. Thursday newscast, KCBS gave six minutes of its puny news hole to a manufactured “Survivor II” story and tie-in, while failing to mention the $1.6-trillion tax cut proposal President Bush had sent to Congress that day or that former President Clinton had been savaged by Democrats and Republicans in Day One of congressional hearings on his last-minute pardon to fugitive oil broker Marc Rich.

And KCBS opened “Survivor Friday”--that’s what these network pep squads title it--by having reporter Helen Kumari hang out with the hosts of KRTH-FM (101.1) and urge viewers and listeners to call in and give their choice of contestants to be voted from “Survivor II.” This was the KCBS morning news, mind you.

It also offered viewers a challenging quiz--Did Amber, Jerri or Keith rub Colby’s back Thursday night?--and discussions with giddy anchors Sophia Choi and Catherine Anaya on “Survivor II” lore along with their interviews of KCBS callers about who in this crowd deserved to “get the boot.”

Here’s one vote for Choi and Anaya. And when the show’s traffic anchor, Jim Thornton, opened his freeway report by saying, “We’ve got some survivors of our own . . . ,” he qualified, too.

It was a classic example of commercializing even language, Survivorese being the idiom in which these people now routinely communicate, surely with encouragement from their bosses.

Local is local, for decades a remote, uncivilized outback of journalism ethics where nearly anything goes. But somehow you expect more, even in today’s looser news environment, from a network, especially one with the storied history of CBS.

Oh sure. “Who gets kicked off today?” asked Gumbel, beginning Thursday’s “Survivor II” dialogue on “CBS This Morning.”

As always, “Survivor Friday” brought a lengthy visit to the CBS News show from the contestant who did get ejected on the previous night’s episode. In lounge singer mode, but not quite ready for Vegas, Maralyn Hershey opened her morning TV gig with a song she had written about her “Survivor II” experience. Interviewed by Clayson--who said she cried when the 51-year-old ex-cop was shown being bounced Thursday night--Hershey was on camera for about half of the 15 minutes that “CBS This Morning” granted “Survivor II.”

That included Gumbel leading “Survivor I” winner Richard Hatch and two other panelists in a rehash of Thursday night’s episode, as viewers everywhere surely were on the edges of their seats, waiting for them to respond to the host’s question about the chumminess of Jerri and Colby: “Is she playing him or is he playing her?”

Actually, viewers may be the ones getting played here.

Although morning shows surely have covered even dumber topics, it was the way Gumbel appeared to do it Thursday that was especially bothersome when he interviewed an expert on dangerous wild creatures living in the region where “Survivor II” was taped.

“One bite from this creature . . . ,” the expert began about a snake called the death adder, projecting a sense of urgency about the safety of “Survivor II” contestants.

“Now there are scorpions . . . where these survivors are,” said Gumbel, his use of the present tense implying the contestants were in peril as he spoke. “If someone gets bitten by a scorpion down there . . . ,” he went on.

In truth, they were as much in danger from death adders and scorpions Thursday as from woolly mammoths, the videotaped outback game having been completed and its participants flown home long ago.

Was it a slip of the tongue from a seasoned, polished host who always seems in control? Or was Gumbel doing the bidding of CBS by attempting to sell “Survivor II” as one deadly hazard after another?

If so, you had to wonder which contained less reality: “Survivor: The Australian Outback” or the network news program constantly promoting it?

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.