Katie Couric producer fired for on-air plagiarism from WSJ

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003569789

 

Sure the producer gets the ax. What about Couric's shining star is it diminished or is she just insulated for being a talking head?

 

Couric probably had no idea, as it sounds like she's just a talking head; reading whatever comes up on the teleprompter.

 

how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that someone will not notice?
And in fairness to Couric, she likely has better things to do than research and write little video essays. If I were her, I'd dump it off to an associate producer too.

 

do these 'stars' ever do their own work?

or do they just sit back and let everybody else research and write? that's my impression. katie couric probably can't write her own video essay - i'd bet on it.

and if katie couric reads a video essay written by an underling, why doesn't she credit the underling? isn't she plagiarizing the underling who wrote it?

 

Maybe Dan Rather did the work for her. Just what CBS needed.

 

I'm sorry. Did the subject line say the producer was promoted or fired for ripping off something from a newspaper?

 

I must be missing something because TV plagiarizes every day off newspapers.

 

No they don't!

 

Elliotte, there are never any plagiarism scandals in the print ranks.

 

What cracks me up about this whole thing -- this was for "Katie Couric's Notebook," which is a 45-second thing the network feeds out to its affiliates for air on the local news. It's supposed to be Katie's personal take on news of the day, or some other little personal musing. Needless to say, it doesn't appear that Katie's musings are really all that personal. (Not that it comes as much of a surprise -- there have been days when Katie is running late, or on assignment, or whatever, and CBS feeds out Russ Mitchell's Notebook instead... and then they'll send out an advisory that Katie is back, and they'll re-feed the notebook segment with Katie reading word-for-word what was sent out by Russ Mitchell earlier.)

And for what it's worth, a lot of the stars write their own copy or at least do a heavy re-write. Last I heard, the Sportscenter anchors scripted virtually everything themselves. (It could clearly be argued that that is not a good thing.) Keep in mind, they also have a hell of a lot of promos and teases to tape, and other demands on their time. On the local level anchors often have so much other crap they have to do before a newscast that they have barely read the scripts before they go on.