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<p>Now, most people just watch the color and pageantry rather than focusing on the announcers, but Couric’s reasoning for why the Netherlands is so dominant in speedskating stopped everyone. Couric mentioned Amsterdam’s canals and pointed out that skating is “an important mode of transportation” when the canals freeze over.</p>

To the shock of America, Katie Couric admitted she shared an intimate evening with Larry King. Yes, the bespectacled, suspender wearing, grandfatherly TV-news journalist who is 23 years Couric’s senior. On last night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Couric recounted in striking detail about the Italian dinner date she went on with King 26 years ago in Washington, DC. After dinner, King drove them back to his apartment where he tried to put the moves on her. “So we sat there and what can I say, he lunged,” Couric said (to the delight/horror of everyone watching probably.)

From John Ziegler, creator of the documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted. On April 15th, the once upon a time prestigious (and apparently now openly a political leftist propaganda tool, akin to the Nobel Prize given to Paul Krugmann -not elevating leftist quacks, but rather tarnishing once noble institutions) USC Annenberg School for Communication will be presenting CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric with the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism. Now, for there to even be such a thing as an prize for Excellence in Television Journalism, in an age where a...

Appearing on Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, Evening News anchor Katie Couric discussed her White House interview with President Obama regarding the withdrawal of recent cabinet nominees: "He is surprisingly relaxed...extremely comfortable, very focused. It’s very different than sort of the buttoned-up Bush White House...he said to every person who interviewed him...that he ‘screwed up,’ he ‘messed up.’ And I think he really is trying to be the anti-Bush because President Bush was so criticized for never saying, you know, ‘I made a mistake.’" On Tuesday’s Evening News, Couric portrayed Obama as a victim. Early Show co-host Harry Smith agreed with...

NEW YORK - A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal. The essay was removed from the CBS Web site and an editor’s note was posted saying the item should have credited Jeffrey Zaslow of the Journal, the network said Tuesday.

Hi, everyone. Yesterday, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney declared his candidacy for president. Last Saturday, Illinois Senator Barack Obama did the same. Why was neither announcement a surprise? Maybe because everybody knows that both these candidates--along with all the others--have been running for months. And yet, we --the media -- and they -- the candidates -- conspire with each other, and pretend that these announcements are actually news. The game has been played every election since 1988 and it goes like this: Candidates announce they're thinking of exploring--we cover that. Candidates announce they're officially exploring--we cover that. Candidates announce they're--quote--"pretty...

NEW YORK - There will be a little less "Free Speech" and more news on Katie Couric's "CBS Evening News." The controversial opinion segment will be cut back to a couple of times a week, sometimes less, and feature more people whose opinions aren't already well known, Rome Hartman, the broadcast's executive producer, said Monday. The cutback was first reported in the Washington Post. It was the most experimental segment on Couric's broadcast, currently third behind NBC and ABC in the ratings. "We did learn as we went along that some worked better than others, although I found most of...

Tonight, I'm... Watching Katie Not

by Mark Finkelstein May 31, 2006 You have to admire the consistency of Katie Couric and her Today show crew. In her final appearance as Today show host, we were treated to a litany of parting shots at Republicans and bouquets tossed to Democrats. In the first half-hour, the emphasis was on Katie-the-hard-nosed-reporter, asking the tough questions. But . . . surprise! the only objects of pointed inquiries were non-Democrats. First was her famous ambush interview of Pres. George H.W. Bush when the ostensible purpose of her White House visit was a tour with Barbara Bush on the occasion of...

Johnny Carson had Bette Midler singing to him during his farewell week on NBC's Tonight show in 1992, but tomorrow, Katie Couric will have Tony Bennett and the entire cast of a Broadway show. "We're going to throw her a nice party on May 31st, and the viewers are invited - they should all participate," Jim Bell, executive producer of Today, said in a telephone interview last week. As she leaves to anchor the CBS Evening News, her 15 years of co-hosting Today will be remembered mostly in videos. "From her colonoscopy to some contentious political interviews and some silly...

by Mark Finkelstein May 23, 2006 Sometimes you just want to throw up your hands. Interviewing another big oil exec this morning, Katie Couric's proposed solution to high gas prices was to repeal the laws of supply and demand . . . just a little bit. Whereas Matt Lauer took a while in his interview of another oil exec to get around to his price-cutting point, Katie wasted no time. Interviewing Shell Oil President John Hofmeister, Katie's opening salvo was "I am just wondering, you and many other oil companies are posting record high profits, of course. And while the...

The front page of Saturday's Style section in the Washington Post carried an article on commencement addresses by Don Oldenburg. But the really amazing nugget came about 25 paragraphs in: Most universities settle for small-splash speakers such as state politicians or captains of local industry, but others aggressively enter the celebrity lottery. Generally this means bestowing an honorary degree and covering travel expenses, rather than paying a fee...But some offer big bucks. Katie Couric, the soon-to-be CBS anchor, will receive $110,000 to speak at the University of Oklahoma's commencement -- all paid for from private funds, the university emphasizes. Often,...

by Mark Finkelstein May 2, 2006 Katie Couric put on a display of industrial-strength umbrage this morning when Bill Frist suggested the soon-to-be CBS anchor is opposed to drilling in ANWR. In the wake of yesterday's Today show segment on Frist's proposal for a $100 gas tax rebate in which Matt Lauer gave respectful treatment to Rush Limbaugh's suggestion that the rebate amounted to treating taxpayers like ladies of the night, Frist must have known that he was walking into the lion's den this morning. At one point, Katie hit Frist with excerpts from two letters to the editor of...

This week is the first of a new epoch in American history. It might come to be known by historians as the Post-NBC-Couric Age, or possibly The Second Era of Katie. It is the first full week after Katie Couric announced that she was leaving the television network NBC to join the television network CBS. You may not have heard of Ms Couric. She is a perky, personable 49-year-old TV presenter. After 16 years as co-anchor of Today, the long-running breakfast show, she has jumped ship to host the main evening news at the rival network CBS. Now in Britain...

by Mark Finkelstein March 29, 2006 A quick take on a morning when I'm headed to Washington, DC. Sometimes, you just can't win with the MSM. For weeks, the MSM has been calling for a White House shake-up. So when it came in spades yesterday with the resignation of chief of staff Andy . . . Card [spades, Card. Come on, tough room here!], naturally the media applauded the bold move. Or not. Veteran NewsBusters readers know better. There is no appeasing the liberal media. They recalibrate their line of attack and move on. But who could have predicted the...

Katie Turns Off BS Detector as Kerry Trumpets Bogus Stats Posted by Rich Noyes on February 1, 2006 - 11:20. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry must be thinking how fortunate he was that there were no real journalists in the room -- just perky Katie Couric -- when he appeared on NBC’s Today to complain about President Bush’s State of the Union address. As NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein noted earlier, Couric did ask a couple of pointed questions, at one point asking Kerry if there “was there anything you appreciated or liked hearing” in Bush’s speech. But when Kerry started inventing statistics...

Losing presidential elections appears to be quite difficult for Democratic nominees to take. Al Gore has now evolved into a hysterical radical, unhinged caricature and attacks anything that doesn't fit his far left agenda at every turn. Now it appears John Kerry is set to join the unhinged failed presidential candidate club. After his Davos dial, where he called for a filibuster of new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito from the slopes, he hit the airwaves on Wednesday morning and threw a bit of a hissy fit on the NBC's 'Today' Show. It was to be nothing more than an...

CBS Offering Katie Couric $60 Million CBS is offering Katie Couric $60 million over five years to anchor the network’s "Evening News,” according to a report – LESS than the $15 million a year she is currently paid as host of NBC’s "Today.” CBS apparently felt justified in making the lower offer because Couric would be on the air for only 30 minutes a night, compared to three hours on "Today,” the New York Post reports. But Couric’s salary at "Evening News” – which has been stuck in third place for a decade – would be "only a portion of...

During its live coverage of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, NBC did not tell viewers that a giant balloon had caught on a street lamp and injured two sisters. At the point in the broadcast when the "M&M's Chocolate Candies" balloon was supposed to have crossed the finish line, announcers Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker stuck close to their scripts and the network ran footage of the balloon from last year's parade. Couric told the audience they were seeing old footage and bantered with Lauer and Roker, but there was no further mention of the accident. An...

by Mark Finkelstein November 9, 2005 - 09:11. If there's one area in which the French take a back seat to no one, it's in the realm of surrender and appeasement. We have seen history repeat itself today as French Prime Minister de Villepin announced a series of new and expanded welfare programs to reward the Muslim rioters who have set fire to 300 French cities. But those heroic Gallic efforts to appease Muslim insurgents aren't coming fast enough to please NBC reporter Jim Maceda. In a segment airing on this morning's Today show, Maceda, reporting from Paris, proclaimed that...