Katie Couric is being run through the grinder right about now. She’s gone from respected television journalist to a level slightly below that unidentifiable substance you scrape off your shoe and don’t want to ask too many questions about.
I’d say I hate it for her, but, well, that would imply that I have some degree of sympathy for her. I really don’t.
Yet Couric is claiming that all of this is being blown out of proportion.
Journalist Katie Couric, who’s been caught up in multiple editing scandals in her career, complained Monday that reported excerpts from her book had been “distorted” and “cherrypicked” to a degree that didn’t resemble her actual writing.
In an appearance on “The View,” Couric said she didn’t think her memoir “Going There” was particularly provocative, but the book has gained attention after her revelations that she believed female colleagues were angling for her job, sent warm texts to Matt Lauer while he was caught up in a sexual harassment scandal, and once edited out disparaging remarks by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about national anthem kneelers in an effort to “protect” the liberal icon.
“This book really has people going in circles,” host Whoopi Goldberg said, laughing.
Journalist @katiecouric discusses her headline-making new memoir 'Going There."
"I wanted it to be genuine and really reflect my point of view and my feelings about things at any given time." https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/K3WxREFYZZ
— The View (@TheView) October 25, 2021
“I didn’t think it was that provocative … It really isn’t if you read it,” Couric said. “I mean, to me it’s been sort of distorted, cherrypicked, twisted, and rewritten in a way that, to me, bears very little resemblance to what I wrote.”
That’s just awful.
I mean, what kind of a monster would take someone’s words and try to distort them or misrepresent them in such a way that it “bears very little resemblance” to what they said?
Well, a monster like Katie Couric, actually.
After all, she’s basically claiming she’s the recipient of the exact same treatment she gave gun rights activists when she deceptively edited an anti-gun documentary she worked on.
In that work, she asked a question. Gun rights activists answered with suggestions on how to address the issues Couric raised. When the film was released, though, that very same question appeared to have been met with silence.
Yet there are important differences between what Couric did then and what her critics are doing now.
For one thing, her critics are actually referring to something she actually said. They’re at least taking her own words and using them against her. She can claim it’s out of context, cherry-picked, twisted, or whatever, but they’re still her words.
What she did was to erase an entire argument in an effort to make people she disapproved of look bad. She made it clear she wasn’t a journalist, but an activist.
She’s complaining and saying she’s being mistreated for people doing less than she did to others. I’m sorry, but nothing about that actually makes me feel bad for Katie Couric. Who I feel bad for are all the other people I suspect she’s done this to but who lacked the power to actually do anything about it.
No, I don’t know that she’s done that, but I seriously doubt that “documentary” was the first time for her.
Frankly, she’s got no room to complain. I find it great that even her old stomping grounds have turned on her. Now what we need is for the media to understand that if they want to maintain their credibility, they have to do better than Couric did. They have to present the news in as unbiased a manner as possible.
Either that or just stop pretending to be unbiased. I can at least respect that, too.
But don’t anyone start to think that Couric is alone in this kind of behavior. There’s a reason she’s shocked that she’s getting all this blowback, after all.
