Katie Couric's Trouble With Katz

With her ratings in the basement, Katie Couric is trying to drive up her appeal by displaying her mastery of the content. But the gaffes can still happen – whether it’s the anchor’s fault or the CBS publicity staff. In the September issue of the promotional pamphlet "CBS News Report" – published locally with ads for the D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA – Couric has several "Katie Couric’s Notebook items." One of them complained that women’s magazines are still accepting ads for "light and luscious" cigarettes: "Congresswoman Lois Katz, who used to be a school nurse, has criticized the hypocrisy of magazines peddling the very health hazard their editorial pages rail against."

The only problem is there is no Rep. Lois Katz. There’s a Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara), who’s been in Congress since March 1998, when she replaced her husband Walter, who died of a heart attack the previous fall. She was a school nurse in Santa Barbara.

Couric’s commentary concluded:

In a letter to eleven magazines, she and dozens of her colleagues called on publishers to stop running them. Only four of them have responded. Not one of them has said their magazines will stop. Maybe they should all take a page from the grande dame of women’s magazines – Good Housekeeping. It stopped accepting cigarette ads in 1952. Fifty-five years later, isn’t it time for the others to follow?