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Thursday, April 12, 2007

CBS: Lying's okay, stealing is bad

What to make of the flap over Katie Couric's plagiarized "Notebook"?

Couric's producer was sacked and her network obliged to apologise for the incident which occurred in a commentary called Katie's Notebook, which purported to be a personal essay from the anchor and was posted on her blog.
...The piece on the joys of getting her first library card as a child relied heavily on a column by Jeffrey Zaslow that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month, lamenting the decline of public libraries.
"Much of the material in the Notebook came from Mr Zaslow, and we should have acknowledged that at the top of our piece. We offer our sincere apologies for the omission," CBS said in an editor's note on its website yesterday.

So, CBS apologizes for stealing a Notebook entry from Zaslow, but isn't embarrassed at all that Katie Couric's Notebook entries are written by someone else? Couric signs off by saying, "That's a page from my notebook". She's clearly implying that she has writing or or reporting these entries. In fact, she's not. So much so, that even her personal remembrances are being written for her.

There's nothing wrong with the Notebook stories -- but they aren't Katie Couric's.

Labels: CBS