Katie Couric

Anchors try to put a friendly spin on the year's worst holiday -- and just end up embarrassing themselves

By Drew Grant

Friday the 13th on the news.

Topics:Media Criticism, ABC, Katie Couric, NBC, Television

Friday the 13th is the one time of the year that everyone gets together, renounces their religions, and starts believing entirely in the power of luck for a day. It’s true! Superstition trumps common sense on the 13th, and as someone who once got fired and evicted on one of these days, I’m more of a believer in its power than anyone. Still, I know how ridiculous it sounds to be scared of a day because of bad mojo. That’s why it’s always funny to watch news anchors try to cover Friday the 13th. Is it a holiday? Should they make fun of it? (Or is that just tempting the bad luck gods?)

We take a look at some of the more egregious examples of stations trying to make this non-story work below.

In 2009, Katie Couric did a short segment on Friggatriskaidekaphobia, a phobia of Friday the 13th, which raises the question: Why do we need a name for something everyone has?

: Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant

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NBC catches former Alaska governor on the spot about her lack of media knowledge

By Natasha Lennard

FILE - In a Feb. 17, 2011 file photo, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin answers questions at the public appearance at Long Island (LIA) Association Meeting and Luncheon in Woodbury, N.Y. Palin will share the stage in Colorado Monday, May 2, 2011 at a fundraiser at Colorado Christian University with Retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a former senior military intelligence official who disparaged Islam while helping to lead the war on terror after Sept. 11. Monday evening's speech was already scheduled before Sunday's killing of Osama bin Laden. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Morning Clip, War Room, Katie Couric, Media Criticism, Sarah Palin

Who could forget Katie Couric’s excruciating interview with Sarah Palin in 2008 when the then-vice presidential hopeful was unable to name even one newspaper? You might think after such a reputation-dashing incident, Palin would have swotted up on her media knowledge. But not so, according to some short footage that has emerged from the MSNBC White House Correspondents Dinner after party.

An NBC reporter asked a number of celebrities, newsmakers and Palin to name who they think is the most influential journalist today. ”Um, gosh, that’s a great question, I have to think about it, OK? Because there are many,” responded Palin, after turning to husband Todd for his thoughts (to little avail).

: Natasha Lennard is Brooklyn-based writer and a project officer for the International News Safety Institute - North America. More Natasha Lennard

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The "60 Minutes" veteran will take over on June 6

By Associated Press

In this 2005 photo released by CBS, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley, is shown. (AP Photo/CBS, John Filo) MANDATORY CREDIT; NO ARCHIVE; NO SALES; FOR NORTH AMERICAN USE ONLY. (Credit: AP)

Topics:CBS, Katie Couric

CBS says Scott Pelley will take over as its evening news anchor, starting on June 6.

The network on Tuesday announced the expected selection of Pelley, the veteran “60 Minutes” reporter, to replace Katie Couric on the “CBS Evening News.” Couric is pursuing a syndicated talk show, but hasn’t said where she will be working next. The date for her final CBS broadcast has not been set.

Pelley is a Texas native who has worked at CBS for two decades. He will inherit a broadcast that is in last place in the ratings behind NBC and ABC, and has been for some time.

CBS said Pelley will continue to do stories for “60 Minutes.”

: More Associated Press

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Dan Rather's controversial successor may be leaving her CBS gig -- and getting back to the format she does best

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Katie Couric

Topics:Katie Couric, Television

Katie Couric was always an outside-the-box choice for CBS news anchor. Following in the gravitas-filled footsteps of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, Couric was a morning news veteran, a woman to whom the adjectives “perky” and “cute” have been applied more times than Lindsay Lohan has been called “troubled.”

So perhaps it was not entirely surprising Monday when the Associated Press reported that a CBS network executive confirmed that the anchor, whose CBS Evening News is trailing at third in the ratings, will be leaving the network when her five year contract expires in June.

Is the anonymous tipster just a classic decoy, designed to test the waters of public opinion before Couric and the network get down to negotiations? CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said Sunday, “We have no announcements to make at this time. Until we do, we will continue to decline comment on rumor or speculation,” and Couric’s own spokesman likewise declined to comment.

But unlike so much of what comes down the rumor mill, the notion of Couric beating a hasty exit out of the Tiffany Network has the convincing ring of truth. Couric made history back in 2006 when she became the first woman to single-handedly anchor a nightly network news broadcast, a move considered unusual, largely because of her upbeat “Today” show personality.

And while Couric is a far more competent and knowledgeable journalist than she gets credit for – her effortless, idiocy-exposing interviews with Sarah Palin were a highlight of the 2008 election – the past few years have borne out that she’s also a newswoman whose distinctly human touch makes her better suited to the field than to the chair. Couric, unlike the self-deprecating, slow-jamming-to-the-news Brian Williams possesses a quickness and a warmth historically unique in the troika of network talking heads. She’s more like the always-up-for-getting-emotional Anderson Cooper, a man who shines best when firing questions at interviewees or pulling together impassioned reports from the scene of a breaking story. And it’s hard to imagine Diane Sawyer unselfconsciously dispensing wet willies in an “investigative report” on shaking the sillies out.

So where would Couric, who was chastised by David Letterman last month for copping to the fact that she’s “figuring out what I want to do and figuring out the future,” go next? Despite Letterman’s insistence that “Once you take that chair, that’s what you do,” Couric, who cheerfully countered, “Is that CBS law?” has a number of possibilities. She admitted in an interview for next Sunday’s New York Times that she and Jeff Zucker “talk a lot and, yes, we’ve been discussing the possibilities” of a talk show for 2012 that would be a place “for smart conversation.”

Couric has, for her entire career, had to figure out how to deftly wear the persona that her audience responds to – that friendly disposition that helped make her a news star – while fighting off the criticism that an anchor must resemble God in full commandment-delivering mode. In her Times interview, she dismisses the charge of not possessing gravitas by calling the word “Latin for ‘testicles,’ by the way” and admitting she’s bristled at the “sexist undertone” of being categorized as “perky.” “It meant shallow and cute, but not somebody who had any depth,” she says.

Depth doesn’t have to come at the expense of humanity – far from it. If and when she leaves, it won’t be with her perky tail between her legs. The real question is why evening news viewers are still so reluctant to accept someone a little looser delivering the big stories of the day. And though Couric admits, “We probably would have been better off playing it a little safer,” it seems she’s ready to redefine “better off.” She certainly seemed to be dropping a big clue to her next move when she told Hemispheres magazine this month that, “I sometimes miss the connection I had with ‘Today’ Show viewers, because I was very much myself. I could be spontaneous. People felt like they knew me because they sort of did.” In her long career in the public eye, viewers have indeed come to know Couric – and not as someone who couldn’t take the “CBS Evening News” out the dumpster, but as a competent journalist with a distinctive set of talents. That’s why to those of us who admire what she does so well, the idea that she might be “better off” talking to people instead of dispensing headlines isn’t news at all.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams

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Couric set to leave "CBS Evening News" in the coming months, according to a network executive

By David Bauder, Associated Press

FILE - In this July 16, 2006 file photo, Katie Couric, CBS News anchor and correspondent, answers questions about her upcoming season anchoring "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" during a news conference in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Lucas Jackson, File) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Katie Couric, CBS

Katie Couric is leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.

A network executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Couric has not officially announced her plans, reported the move to The Associated Press on Sunday night. The 54-year-old anchor is expected to launch a syndicated talk show in 2012 and several companies are vying for her services.

Couric’s move from NBC’s “Today” show was big news in 2006, and she began in the anchor chair with a flourish that September. She tried to incorporate her strengths as an interviewer into a standard evening news format and millions of people who normally didn’t watch the news at night checked it out. But they drifted away and the evening newscast reverted to a more traditional broadcast.

After those first few weeks, the “CBS Evening News” settled into third place in the ratings and is well behind leader Brian Williams at NBC’s “Nightly News” and second-place Diane Sawyer at ABC’s “World News.”

No departure date has been set for Couric. Her CBS News contract expires on June 4.

“We’re having ongoing discussions with Katie Couric,” said CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair on Sunday. “We have no announcements to make at this time. Until we do, we will continue to decline comment on rumor or speculation.”

Said Matthew Hiltzik, Couric’s spokesman: “Ditto.”

Still, discussions are already under way about who will replace Couric on the evening newscast. Russ Mitchell, Scott Pelley and Harry Smith are among the internal CBS candidates, and new CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager is also expected to look outside the company.

Couric, who was on vacation last week, was reluctant to talk about her future when she appeared on fellow CBS host David Letterman’s show on March 22. “Once you take that anchor chair, that’s what you do,” Letterman told her.

“Really?” Couric answered.

“Look at Walter Cronkite, look at Tom Brokaw, look at Brian Williams, look at Peter Jennings, look at all these people,” Letterman said. “They get in it, they saddle up and they ride into the sunset.”

Couric smiled widely and said she loved doing the evening news and was proud of her work, but made no future commitments. Despite the ratings problems, the “CBS Evening News” won the Edward R. Murrow Award as best newscast in 2008 and 2009. Couric’s interview with then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 was a memorable moment in the campaign after Palin couldn’t or wouldn’t answer Couric’s question about books or magazines she regularly read.

Even with those high points, broadcast news economics had changed markedly since she signed on with CBS and her reported $15 million a year salary became increasingly hard to justify for a third-place telecast. Fager, the “60 Minutes” executive producer, was installed as CBS News chairman two months ago and new executives frequently like to put their own stamp on newscasts.

Rome Hartman, Couric’s first executive producer at the “CBS Evening News,” said that while Couric’s tenure clearly didn’t work out as well as CBS hoped, “I don’t think it’s right to think of it as, or call it, a failure.”

For the first time in many years, a network tried to increase the number of viewers watching the evening news instead of trying to steal a bigger slice out of an ever-shrinking pie, said Hartman, editor of “BBC World News America.”

“There are people who love Katie and those who don’t love her and that was a factor,” he said. “But it was the overall dynamics. There was a rock that we couldn’t move and I don’t think it would have mattered who we would have put in there.”

Although Couric will leave the evening news, she might not leave CBS. The CBS Corp. is a powerful force in the syndication business as owners of “Dr. Phil” and “Judge Judy,” and the upcoming departure in May of Oprah Winfrey will leave a huge void in the talk show marketplace. Through CBS-owned stations, the company could give a big head start to a Couric show. Due to the sales calendar, such a show would not likely begin until fall 2012.

A syndication deal with CBS is seen as the only possibility that Couric would continue as evening news anchor on a temporary basis past June, if she were to agree to stay during an extended search for her successor.

Other chief contenders for Couric’s services are NBC and Telepictures. NBC is her old home, but is not considered a big player in the talk show business. It tried and failed to launch a show for Jane Pauley, one of Couric’s predecessors on “Today.” Telepictures is bigger in the marketplace, producing “Ellen” and a new show with Anderson Cooper debuting in the fall, both of which could take potential time slots away from Couric.

Each of the companies has related news divisions where Couric could have some visibility before starting a talk show — at CBS, NBC or CNN, through Telepictures.

The personality that Couric could be expected to readily display on the talk show circuit could be seen last week in a video posted by aol.com. Couric, who has actively encouraged Americans to get colonoscopies since her husband died of colon cancer, took a humorous look at undergoing her own test. Her doctor jokingly noted that he had found a Batman doll while looking at Couric’s internal organs.

: More David Bauder

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The journalist's hot, spike-heeled fashion spread is a departure for her. But is it really one leap for womankind?

By Kate Harding

27 October 2009- Long Beach, California- Katie Couric speaks during the 2009 Women's Conference in Long Beach, California. Photo Credit: Krista Kennell/Sipa Press./conferencewomens.036/0910280712 (Credit: Kennell Krista/sipa)

Topics:Katie Couric, Broadsheet, Gender

After nearly 30 years in broadcast journalism, Katie Couric is finally allowed to present herself as sexy, says the Washington Post‘s Robin Givhan. And this is apparently something to celebrate.

Meditating on a recent Harper’s Bazaar fashion spread, in which the first female solo evening news anchor poses in a “short — very short — skirt,” a curve-hugging Calvin Klein dress and “the kind of platform Gucci heels that have been known to send professional models tumbling to their knees,” Givhan writes, “[a]fter breaking ground in network news, after having folks debate whether she should have worn a white blazer on her debut show — as if anything but black or navy proclaimed her less serious — there are these images. Unapologetically, forcefully, I-dare-you, sexy.” The photos offer “a full-throated, even exaggerated, rebuke of the notion that a woman must dress in a prescribed manner — Suze Orman suits, full-coverage blouses, sensible heels — to protect her IQ, her résumé and her place in a male-dominated work culture.” Never mind Couric’s Cronkite Award-winning evisceration of Sarah Palin, even — just check out those shoes!

[T]here’s a particular brand of power-positioning at play when a woman walks confidently into a room in a pair of heels that make those who’d be suffering vertigo blanch: How can she walk in those? Pure grit — that’s the explanation. And yes, please infer that if those four-inch stilettos don’t draw tears from the woman wearing them, then neither will some ambitious colleague’s backstabbing ways. Fashion, in this sense, is power.

Um, OK. But also, four-inch heels might convey power for Couric because without them, she’s itty bitty — which is high among the reasons why she’s struggled to be taken seriously throughout her career. Givhan writes as though Couric’s image challenges were the (stereo)typical career gal ones — i.e., being treated as a sex object even while chafing in androgynous power suits — but as a journalist, Couric’s most famously suffered from an equally limiting but decidedly unsexy problem: She’s adorable. Physically, Katie Couric comes across as the kind of person for whom hot pink capri pants with tiny embroidered palm trees were invented. A brief foray into Queen of Mean status notwithstanding, the adjective most often used to describe her is “perky.” None of this comes up in Givhan’s piece, which implies that Couric’s bombshell factor has long been hidden under a boxy navy blazer, as opposed to a Lilly Pulitzer shift. But Couric herself speaks about it in the interview that accompanies the photo spread. Phoebe Eaton writes:

She points to a photo on the wall of herself up to something important with General Ray Odierno in Iraq. “I look like a little peanut compared to him, don’t I?” she asks. She looks like she’s about 16 years old. It’s the Tinker Bell nose. “I know,” she says glumly. “That was a real detriment for me earlier in my career because I had a kind of young look. Those were the days.”

While the look Couric’s sporting in Bazaar is indeed a departure from what she’s known for, then, it’s not because she’s spent the last 25 years eschewing markers of femininity. It’s more because she’s been boxed into a single image of femininity that all but rules out raw sex appeal (no matter how widely admired her legs are) — the Madonna instead of the Eve. And both images are equally effective when it comes to diminishing a smart woman’s perceived gravitas. Givhan seems to be suggesting that Couric deftly avoided falling into the hot bimbo trap for long enough that she can now afford to mix sexiness with power, but that ignores the fact that, like Paula Zahn — whom CNN regrettably introduced as “just a little sexy” 10 years ago — Couric established herself as a powerful woman despite people’s intense focus on her gender and appearance, not by successfully distracting them from it. “Sometimes I feel like a little Barbie that people dress,” she told Eaton. If her recent wardrobe choices have tended toward the dull and colorless, it’s because “With the job I have, it’s much easier to pick apart what women are wearing, and I think the less ammo everybody has, the better.”

So I’m having trouble seeing Couric’s adopting a sexy bitch look for a fashion shoot as a big step forward. If she had historically been seen as sexless because her viewing audience and potential employers were so overwhelmed by her intelligence, talent and unisex blazers they naturally afforded her exactly the same respect as her male peers, never giving a moment’s thought to her looks or gender, I might be cheering this reminder that a woman can be simultaneously powerful and sexual. But Couric’s really just one more example of an exceptional woman who managed to become successful even while everyone was relentlessly hung up on her appearance and femininity. No matter how different this style is for her, at the end of the day, it still leaves us talking about her face, legs and hair at least as much as her accomplishments. Talking about those things is Givhan’s job, granted — but what excuse do the rest of us have?

: Kate Harding is the co-author of "Lessons From the Fatosphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body" and has been a regular contributor to Salon's Broadsheet. More Kate Harding