Couric is “Horrified,” and So Am I [VIDEO]

Posted by Melissa McEwan at 7:52 AM on April 11, 2007.

Katie Couric was "horrified" to learn that one of her one-minute "Katie's Notebook" commentaries -- which "are distributed to CBS television and radio stations…and posted on the news division's Web site" -- was plagiarized by one of her producers from a Wall Street Journal column. Worse yet, it was meant to be a personal reflection piece, beginning with Katie musing, "I still remember when I got my first library card, browsing through the stacks for my favorite books." Oof.

Much of the rest of the script was stolen from the Journal. Couric said: "For kids today, the library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out."

Zaslow wrote in March: "The library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out."

Couric said: "Sure, children still like libraries, but books aren't the draw."

Zaslow wrote: "Sure, there are still library-loving children, but books aren't necessarily the draw."

Couric cited the same statistic as the Journal column -- a 60 percent rise in sales of hardcover juvenile books -- as "an encouraging sign that kids value reading." Zaslow had called that "an encouraging sign that kids still value books."

The producer has been fired. Couric no doubt remains horrified.

Frankly, I'm horrified, too. And Oliver Willis puts to paper (so to speak) my horror very succinctly: "Katie Couric -- in my view -- is nothing less than an abomination of the news. Her place at the centerpiece of CBS News' operations is, more than Fox News, the triumph of trifle over substance." Absolutely right. Fox News was designed to be bad; CBS News used to be the standard-bearer for integrity in network news -- and they have consciously and deliberately abandoned that role in favor of trifling nonsense culminating in what was presented as a personal piece being nothing but plagiarized crapola from the desk of a lackey.

And, infuriatingly, CBS decided to take this pathetic plunge with the first woman anchor, reaffirming insidious stereotypes of women being unserious and unconcerned with news and politics -- and Couric goes right along with it, for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend. Every time I read Couric's name, it yields yet another cringe-inducing reason for me to question why she was offered the job and why she took it. The only explanation that makes any sense is a collective desire to annihilate the CBS News operation from the inside out -- in which case, well done.

Tagged as: media, cbs, katie couric

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.