What Katie Did

Jeff Bercovici is on vacation. Guest blogger Sean Elder submits:

Having just posted an item about the press using Katie Couric as a pinata, I hate to start swinging myself. But I just read an account in SF Examiner of the CBS anchor's remarks to the National Press Club and I'm afraid I must put on the blindfold and pick up the stick.

"Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war," Couric told the crowd, and I don't think anyone leapt to their feet to challenge that assumption. But she then went on to talk about her own misgivings during the build up to the war:

"The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States and, even the 'shock and awe' of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the 'Today' show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, 'Will anybody put the brakes on this?' And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in."

Not that she would know. Because in the early stages of the war, Couric was as gung-ho as any of the US press. After an on-air interview with a Navy commander in April 2003, Katie volunteered this unpatriotic assessment: "I think Navy SEALs rock."

Yes, they do, ma'am. But in the flag-waving context of those times, her admiration for the bad-asses of the Navy SEALs seemed like just another endorsement of the no-brainer of a conflict the US had just engaged in. Where were the Today Show's stories questioning the administration's rationale, its rush to action? As the star attraction of a program that reaches millions of mainstream Americans, she could have helped apply those brakes herself.

In further remarks to the Press Club, Couric went on to criticize the Evening News' former anchor Dan Rather for the National Guard story that got him fired. (You could call it chutzpah but it's more likely she still feels stung by Rather's remarks that CBS had "dumbed down" and "tarted up" the news when they hired her.)

"Sloppy work is sloppy work," she said. "They did not dot their I's and cross their T's when it came to that story... And our job is to get right."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

by Sean Elder