Below is video of Katie Couric doing show prep. This was the eve of the Republican National Convention, and Governor Sarah Palin had just been announced as Senator John McCain’s running mate. You can watch the video below:
My first observation is where the heck did she get those glasses? Seriously, this sheds some light into the interview that she had with Sarah Palin. This woman should have never been allowed to come near the Governor, let alone have the access that she had. In Going Rogue: An American Life, Governor Palin describes the interview with Couric as:
I couldn’t have known it then, but what transpired during the series of interviews and what CBS actually aired were two different breeds of cat. Camera crews shot hours of footage across the U.S.; Katie and her producers decided on what fraction America would see – and let’s just say the emphasis was on my worst moments. Editing footage is nothing new, of course; I created video packages when I worked as a sports reporter. But responsible editing means you keep substance and context, and trim out fat. When I saw the final cut, it was clear that CBS had sought out the bad moments, and systematically sliced out material that would accurately convey my message. The sin of omission was glaring, (pg. 272).
She goes on to cite various examples of how editing distorted answers that she gave, etc. She also took responsibility as well, “There was so much I could and should have said, and I later kicked myself for not doing so.” She also admitted that wore her annoyance on her sleeve and that colored some of her answers (for instance, “what do you read?” question, interpreted as “do you read?” in Palin’s mind). Palin also noted.
When she asked me how living in Alaska informed my foreign policy experience, I began by trying to frame the geographical context. Lower 48ers grow up seeing our state tucked with Hawaii in a little square off the coast of Mexico on the nightly news weather map. So I began by trying to squeeze a geographical primer into a ten-second sound bite, explaining that only a narrow maritime border separates Alaska from Russia, that we’re very near the Pacific Rim countries, and that we’re bordered by Canada.
But Katie interrupted and I did not complete my answer. I wish now I had stopped her and said, “Here’s the geographical context. Now may I answer your question?”
There was much Katie appeared not to know, or care to hear about. For instance that Alaska’s geographic location makes our relations with Pacific Rim countries of great strategic import, and that we’re the air crossroads of the world. That Russian bombers often play cat-and-mouse with our Air Force near Alaska’s airspace. That I dealt with Canadian officials on a weekly basis and have signed agreements concerning everything from security to salmon fishing, and that NAFTA has significantly affected our economy. That melting polar sea ice has created new trade routes but has also created security threats to North America. That Alaska takes on Japanese and Russian fishing trawlers that want to ravage the ocean floor. That Chinese and Russian energy companies had both sought access to (and possible control of) our natural gas resources. That these and other countries were staking their own resource claims in Arctic waters while the U.S. sat on its hands. And that, yes, you can indeed see Russia from Alaska.
And those were just the foreign policy issues (though issues certainly foreign to most governors). How much more I would have liked to say about Alaska’s contribution to the U.S. economy, its potential to help the nation reduce its dependence on foreign energy sources, and the delicate balancing act required to manage and responsibly develop our abundant wildlife resources.
But Katie wasn’t interested in discussing these issues. and when I did, she didn’t air them…. But Katie’s purpose – share by most media types – seemed to be to frame a “gotcha” moment. And it worked. Instead of scoring points for John McCain, I knew that I had let the team down, (pg. 274-275).
So looking at the video it seems pretty clear that there was if not hostility an air of superiority. Conservatives 4 Palin notes that there is a larger story than what appears in the leaked video:
It’s not just what was said by Couric in her discussion of Governor Palin, but also the way CBS framed the narrative of Governor Palin’s life in their story. The script covers moose burgers, her kids, her being a former beauty queen and being on the cover of Vogue. Sarah Palin was a sitting governor, and at that time, before the Obama campaign and their allies in the press spent months relentlessly smearing her good name, she had the highest approval ratings of any governor in the country. She was also responsible for getting the largest energy project in North American history underway after several decades of interminable delays in Alaska. She was a courageous corruption-busting whistleblower who turned in the leader of her own party in Alaska for his corrupt practices. She was a fiscal conservative who made the largest veto cuts in Alaska history, reined in the reckless waste, cut her own expenses, sold the governor’s private jet, let the personal chef go, and put away billions of dollars in savings for Alaska for a rainy day. She was a tough CEO who went toe to toe with the Big Oil companies and fought to get the best deal for Alaskans, the resource owners she represented. And she did all of this as a woman from a modest background who was entirely self-made – without the benefit of a rich or influential father or husband.
But what in this impressive biography did CBS News and Couric choose to focus on? Moose burgers and beauty pageants.
By their choice of the framing of the story, it’s evident Couric and CBS had an agenda here: They wanted to diminish Governor Palin because her impressive record of accomplishments towered over the non-existent record of the guy at the top of Democrat ticket.
What was discovered in the JournoList archives shows that the media indeed saw her as a threat. Just add this to the growing mountain of evidence that mainstream media is dead.
