August 04, 2010

Sarah Palin

CBS responds to leaked Couric video

The Politico

As Jonathan Martin reported this morning, Sarah Palin’s supporters have been circulating leaked footage from 2008 showing their least favorite journalist, Katie Couric, expressing wonder at Palin’s children’s names while rehearsing.

The clip, posted to the Palin fan site Conservatives4Palin under the headline “EXPLOSIVE: New Video of Couric Mocking Palin on the Day She was Named as McCain’s Running Mate!,” shows Couric fact-checking the pronunciation of Wasilla and pausing after reading “Trig” and “Track” to say: “Where the hell do they get these names?”

Conservatives4Palin’s editors write that the clip “shows some tantalizing hints of Couric’s attitude toward the governor,” adding that the real story is the unserious way that Couric’s script frames Palin’s life story on the day she was tapped as John McCain’s running mate.

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 Gov. Palin because her impressive record of accomplishments towered over the nonexistent record of the guy at the top of Democrat ticket.

CBS News, reached for comment, said only: “It must be a very slow news day.”

(The clip is the latest in a series of unscripted moments by CBS News anchors that have become YouTube fodder. Dan Rather was caught fretting about his trench coat before a taping in Seattle, and Couric’s own joking about the incident went viral on its own.)

Conservatives4Palin says that, in the background, you can hear the reaction of “CBS news employees who were in the control room as Couric said that about the governor’s kids.” But it’s not clear that the clip was leaked by CBS employees. In the background, a voice says, “They turned her down, dude, did you hear that? Katie, I’m getting you on YouTube,” suggesting the leaker might be watching on a monitor outside CBS.

The clip was originally posted by the College Press Video Network, whose inactive website says it will launch next year as a “selective website featuring the work of our nation's future pundits.”

Rob Brynaert at The Raw Story tracked down the website’s founder, Daren Copely, who said, "Our site is not a conservative or liberal website.” But Brynaert observed that all the blurbs on the impact of a previous incarnation of the site, launched in 2001, came from figures on the right such as Joseph Farah, editor and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com, and David Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh’s brother.

Couric has been unpopular among Palin supporters ever since her series of interviews with the then-governor of Alaska proved to be one of the most damaging moments of Palin’s candidacy. In her book, “Going Rogue,” Palin writes in detail about the experience, calling Couric “a reporter who clearly had a partisan agenda.”

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 which 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 the substance and context, and trim out the 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.