In other words, this is a memory that is not only ‘truthy’ but literally true, for many of us. So in that sense, it’s not as though she was telling a story and attributing it to her own memory when it never actually happened to her (at the risk of being accused of bashing Bill Clinton, I can’t help but mention that this was the kind of thing he was famous for: remember those black churches that he saw burning in Arkansas, which no one else seemed to remember and there was no record of?)

cosmo: Even if you don’t believe the Bush documents were forged, it still works as a theoretical example of the difference of importance in the two cases. In one case you’re making the case that the POTUS went AWOL and in the other case, what’s at stake is whether or not a young lass was really that excited over her first library card. The first is a hard news investigative journalism piece where evidence is important, while the latter is the kind of sentimental story where license should be permitted (though direct quotes without attribution ought not be).

We can be as post-modern and ironic and knowing-ist as we want about the basic inauthenticity of today’s “personality”-driven media, but when a news show makes a point of running a segment that’s supposed to be “my” memories from “my” notebook, is it really too goddamn much to ask that the memories actually be Couric’s and that she be the one to actually write them??

Just another reason to ask what the f*ck people like Couric actually DO all day, that makes them worth the 8-figure salaries they earn.

In sum, as a journalist, she has great legs.

[You goddamn sexist!, go the cries!]

what’s sexist about that? If she’s got great legs, she’s got great legs.

That said, I like Katie Couric, she’s a nice lady, but as a journalist she’s as deep as Oprah Winfrey- America’s reigning poobah of inanity. In sum, as a journalist, she has great legs.

[You goddamn sexist!, go the cries!]

This is not the end if the world, but it is quite frankly another example of the loss of journalistic standards (you know them, the ones that say bloggers are untrustworthy, but the MSM is) and the triumph of entertainment over news.

Having writers assist in writing copy is one thing, but if you are going to present to the public that what you are about to say is from your personal history and recollections, a little higher standard needs to be applied.

Now if someone comes forward and says, “I’ve known her since she was 5 years old and little Katie Couric never wanted to go to the library, she hated books and reading”, then she really would be caught out in a lie and that would be scandalous! LOL

while many who are savvy in the ways of the news biz know that such items are usually written for highly busy media news personalities

Would you argue that a film that says “20 years ago” at the start is ‘lying’ when, in fact, the story didn’t happen at all? Just an invention? It’s a trick used by many in literature and movies. To make it more personal.

Now, at the moment she went on camera, she had a choice – i.e. “I’m either going to lie about this, or I’m not”, and she made the wrong choice. It seems to me that everything flows from that.

Copyrights are, by definition, anti-market acts of law. “Creators” secure them to enlist the government to their aid in restricting the market. It’s a way of restraining competition.

Plagiarism is another way of dealing with competition. The real message here is that media companies are as a matter of simple practicality willing to do anything in the name of competition.