More Details About "Couric & Co." Incident
Today, new details have been made public. The first, and most significant, is that a producer has been fired over the incident. In the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz compared passages from the Zaslow piece and the Notebook.
The Notebook, he noted, included this: "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, meanwhile, had written this: "The library is more removed from their lives. It's a last-ditch place to go if they need to find something out."
There has also been some discussion of the language in the Editor's Note, specifically the use of the word "omission." Writes Regret The Error: "This is a case of plagiarism, not omission." The site also expresses "hope this incident will inspire CBS to create an online corrections page and policy." We discussed how CBS deals with corrections last year.
In the comments section of my initial post, joycewest wrote this: "I didn't realize Katie Couric didn't always write the 'Katie Couric's Notebook' herself. Maybe I am naive, assuming that 'Posted by' means 'Written by,' but I wonder how many other people didn't know that?"
Couric has significant involvement in the Notebooks, though she does not write all of them. Every week, she meets with producers to go over ideas and discuss possible themes. Sometimes, she then writes the pieces herself; in other cases, a producer writes them, after which Couric edits and tapes them. In the case of the April 4 piece, Couric was involved in choosing the topic, though she did not write the piece herself.
Newsweek reported that this "episode started last week, when Couric and the show's producers gathered for a regular weekly meeting to discuss possible topics for the 'Notebook.'" That's not the case: Couric was on vacation last week, and the April 4 Notebook was pre-taped to run while she was away.
Zaslow has said he is satisfied with CBS' handling of the incident. He is quoted in the Post saying CBS "been very gracious and apologetic, and we at the Journal appreciate it."