Larisa Alexandrovna: Katie Couric Needs To Be Fired Immediately

Hissyspit

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Fri Jul-25-08 04:31 AM
Original message

Larisa Alexandrovna: Katie Couric Needs To Be Fired Immediately

Edited on Fri Jul-25-08 05:27 AM by Hissyspit

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/07/katie-couric-ne.html#more

Katie Couric needs to be fired, now!

It is one thing when a bubbly cutie from a morning show lands a massive give as the first woman nightly news caster and then fails miserably because her intellect is not quite as capable of dealing with reality after 5 PM. That kind spectacular failure is the failure of the network to adequately take into account the limitations of the person they are hiring. One could hardly blame Katie Couric for taking a job for that much money. One can, however, entirely blame her employers for their idiocy.

But to fabricate a part of an interview in order to make the person being interviewed appear in a more favorable light is a whole other situation. This type of situation is entirely unethical and entirely a violation of all journalistic principles. Instead of informing the public, Couric's interview simply acted to showcase the best features of the person she interviewed, John McCain. Instead of giving the public all the information they need by which to make an educated choice about something as serious as a Presidential candidate, Couric acted as a public relations specialist instead. Couric is no journalist, that was clear early on. What is is now, however, is not even a credible talking head.

This is what AmericaBlog has to say about the behaviour of Couric in this instance:

This one is hard to even explain, it's so bizarre. McCain, looking just awful on camera, made yet another major gaffe about national security policy, on CBS. So what did Katie Couric do? She aired the interview with McCain, aired the question that led to the gaffe, and then inserted an "answer" to the question that wasn't the real gaffe-filled answer - it was something McCain said in a total other part of the interview. It's absolutely astounding how far the corporate media is willing to go in order to defend John McCain.

I don't know if we can blame the whole corporate media for this. But we can certainly blame Ms. Couric directly for being unethical, and in violation of the most basic of standards.

She was never qualified, but now she is also unethical

Her first major cooking and error-filled moment actually happned sometime back when she interviewed Valerie Plame Wilson - the former CIA officer outed by Cheney, Rove, Libby, and now seemingly Bush as well.

Prior to the 60 Minutes interview of Plame Wilson, CBS released a clip from the show in which Couric makes some accurate information, but does so despite the obvious reason not to make some of those connections so obivious in public and despite the fact that she could not properly source them in the first place.

We know that Plame Wilson was a nonprolifiration expert at the CIA and that although such a niche is generally pan-national, her main focus was Iran and Iraq, although it also included Pakistan because any such arms dealing in the region would almost always have some connection to Pakistan. My understanding is that on this point, Plame Wilson's particular team provided minimal support capabilities.

I broke this story, so I tend to think I know a bit more about it than Couric. She was right on Iran, but there are some things she said that were not accurate and some things that did not need to be made public at all and for good reason.

When I was working that story, I was told specific information about Plame Wilson's work on Iran, but was also under agreement with my sources that at no time was I allowed to use or publicly discuss any information beyond that which appeared in my article. In fact, there was a list of words I was given that I could not use at all in my article because those words could "suggest" something of the operational mechanism.

So given that restriction, I cannot discuss Couric's big gaffe in any meaningful way, other than to say that she sourced it to James Risen, despite the fact that Risen had not mentioned Plame Wilson in his book at all, and especially not in that context. In fact, as far as I know, he did not even mention her as an unnamed officer with the CIA. He never referenced her at all. Editor and Publisher corrected her at that time.

When the 60 Minutes show finally aired, that entire section of the interview was missing without an explanation, a correction, or any reason given as to why. I blogged about that here at the time. I can assume, however, that the likely editing out of that part of the interview was not the erroneous claim that Risen had described Plame Wilson in his book, but rather, that Couric did not bother to check with the Intelligence Community about tying two separate reports by two separate reporters into one story.

By then, however, it did not matter that CBS pulled that part, the cat was by then well out of the bag on some of the allegations. So Couric was both negligent in terms of her responsibilities and also incaccurate. CBS was simply unethical, because they did nothing to explain why this part was cut and like an open wound, it was simply left there in the world to attract even more attention.

Perhaps it is then that CBS realized that Couric was in a bit over her head. Maybe that is why she is now running around after political candidates looking for interviews instead of covering intelligence stories. But in the political sphere she shows another side of herself that frankly is even worse than just a pretty, mildly bright woman in way over her head and not really doing much to correct the situation. In this case, she quite literally lies and covers-up. What she presents to the public is a lie, is it not? It is not a distortion or omission, it is quite literally a lie that she crafted out of bits of interview. That is beyond the pale and requires that she be dismissed along with her producer immediately. There is no room for discussion. This is a total violation of public trust and she must not be allowed to maintain a position in which she is involved in providing to the public news and facts. She can go work at Fox Noise, where such editing skills might be welcome. But a reputable outlet has no business employing her.