A pillar of the United States media establishment took a knock on Wednesday with an admission of plagiarism in a video essay attributed to the CBS anchor Katie Couric.
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.
Couric, who became the first woman to serve as the solo anchor for the evening news on one of the traditional big three networks, was horrified to learn of the plagiarism, press reports said on Wednesday.
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 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 on Wednesday.
The offending essay was stripped from the website.
The Washington Post media editor, Howard Kurtz, said the personal nature of the piece made the plagiarism all the more striking, with the piece beginning with Couric reminiscing about the day she got her first library card.
Despite the apology, there was little sign of embarrassment from CBS or Couric at the revelation that she has little to do with the Notebook items, which are produced as one-minute pieces for television and postings on the network’s website.
The Washington Post quoted CBS officials as saying that it was ”very common” for first person commentaries to be put together by unnamed staffers. While Couric did not write the column, she is involved with selecting topics ranging from Iraq to the dearth of women columnists in US newspapers. – Guardian Unlimited Â