The New York Sun is reporting today that CBS "Blogophile" Melissa McNamara is the producer that was fired for plagiarizing from a Wall Street Journal column. The fired producer recycled language from a Jeffrey Zaslow column in the script she wrote for a Katie Couric "Notebook" entry published to the CBS Web site on April 4. CBS has refused to name the fired producer, but I'll update this post should CBS News address the matter on the network's "PublicEye" blog.
Regardless of the identity of the fired producer, Couric's "Notebook" lives on. Yesterday the "Evening News" anchor vlogged about the religious background of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
I critiqued McNamara once on NewsBusters on an unrelated matter:
In time for the Persian New Year, CBS's Melissa McNamara trawled the blogosphere (including MySpace blog entries) and found bloggers who think Iran's Islamic extremist government has a point about "300" being "anti-Persian." In doing she, she produced a handful of blogs that appear to generate light traffic and in at least one case is just a rambling screed.
McNamara told readers that the "Islamic Republic News Agency" (IRNA) finds fault with the film's version of historical events. She left out that IRNA is Iran's official state-controlled news/propaganda service. CBSNews.com's resident "Blogophile" also noted objections from an Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, which she described simply as "Iran's biggest circulation newspaper."
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O Perky one! Say it ain't so!
April 12, 2007 - 10:51 ET by heldmywKinda takes the luster of the ol' Perkster, doesn't it? Makes me wonder if she's ever had an original, unbuffed, unlawyered, non-lib-talking-point of her own...
Bet not.
Leaving the plagiarism issu
April 12, 2007 - 10:58 ET by Ken ShepherdLeaving the plagiarism issue aside, is the whole reporter's "notebook" convention here a misnomer given the reliance on producers to generate content for it.
On some level, Katie doesn't have to produce all this extra content, but the new media revolution is pushing it along. It's why NBC has the "Daily Nightly" blog and the "Early Nightly" vlog, for example. Yet in those instances, I don't think Brian Williams presents that as "a page from my notebook" as Couric typically signs off.
Certainly there's no problem with having producers do a lot of the prep work and even writing early drafts for Couric vlog entries, but calling them part of her "notebook" might be a bit deceptive in that regard.
That may be one tweak they may think about in the future with this vlog feature.
Couric
April 12, 2007 - 12:22 ET by iveseenitallCouric's ( Yes, COURIC'S) plagiarism exposes her for what she is --a t.v. personality, not a journalist. She probably spends more time adjusting her panty hose than she does on researching what comes out of her mouth in her "notebook".
NEVER,NEVER trust a liberal
The New York Sun has just &
April 12, 2007 - 12:53 ET by WolfremThe New York Sun has just "outed" the producer that was fired (i.e. scapegoated). Oh, the humiliation, she will be scarred for life. Unable to work in the media again. Where are the congressional investigations? Where are the prosecuting attornies? When will the witchhunt, I mean, trials begin? And who will go to prison for some petty issue completely unrelated to the charges?
The world is coming to an end! Oh wait, that is a different issue.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana