Katie Couric says you all need to calm down.
There’s nothing especially unethical about the fact she edited a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to bury the late Supreme Court justice’s harsh critique of athletes who kneel during the national anthem. You see, Couric explained this week, reporters do this sort of thing all the time.
This defense is nearly as bad as the original offense.
First, this isn’t even true. Many journalists understand quite clearly that quietly deleting a public figure’s remarks because they may damage said public figure’s legacy is an affront to actual journalism. So, on that count, Couric is wrong.
Secondly, even if there are a great many people in the news media who do what Couric does, and there are, this is not a defense. It’s simply an admission of widespread wrongdoing. This is hardly comforting.
Couric this week defended her sloppy journalism during an interview with NBC host Savannah Guthrie.
“How did you justify” quietly omitting Ginsburg’s comments, asked the host, adding that what Couric did “violates a cardinal rule of journalism.”
Said Couric, “Well, I think what people don’t realize is we make editorial decisions like that all the time. And I chose to talk about this and put it in the book for a discussion. I mentioned that it was a conundrum that I asked Justice Ginsburg about [former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick] and taking the knee and how she felt about that. And I did include the fact that she said it was ‘dumb’ and ‘disrespectful,’ it was stupid and arrogant, and quite a bit of what she said.”
“There was another line that I thought was — I wasn’t sure what she meant exactly, and I thought it was subject to interpretation,” the former Today host continued. “What I wish I had done is asked a follow-up to clarify or just run it and let her clarify it later. But I think the most pertinent and direct response to the question about Colin Kaepernick, I included. And that’s why I raised it because maybe I should have done the other sentence as well.”
For the record, Ginsburg told Couric in 2016 that the national anthem protesters displayed “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.”
“Which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from,” Ginsburg added. “As they became older, they realize that this was youthful folly. And that’s why education is important.”
Couric omitted these remarks from her subsequent reporting, explaining in her forthcoming memoir she wanted to “protect” the late justice from criticism.
This week, Guthrie pressed Couric to defend withholding remarks made by a public figure.
“You said in the book that you wanted to protect her,” she said. “So, that’s not an occasion where you’re using that objectivity that’s so important to us journalists.”
Guthrie added, “Do you think it was wrong, now that you look at it in the light of day?”
“Yeah, I think I — ultimately, I think I should have included it, but I also think it’s really important to look at what I did include,” responded Couric. “She had to make a statement afterwards saying her comments were harsh and dismissive. I think I still believe I used the most critically important response. But I think you’re right. It might have illuminated it even more if I included that other statement.”
Oh, please. Only a fool would buy the line that Couric is selling. She realizes now, after Ginsburg has passed, and while she conveniently has a book to sell, that she shouldn’t have edited the interview and that we need to have a national conservation on best journalism practices?
Couric obviously should’ve printed the remarks at the time of the interview. She knows this. She knew this in 2016! They were not just newsworthy and relevant to the national discussion, but they were a direct response to Couric’s own question! She genuinely believes Ginsburg’s answer to her own question was not worthy of news coverage? Please. Anthem protests were a major news story at the time, and Couric wanted to know the late justice’s thoughts. But she ended up not liking the justice’s thoughts, so she quietly buried them, as she admits in her own book. Yes, her defense this week contradicts what she writes in her own book.
Also, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess what would’ve happened had, say, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gone on the record in 2016 saying what Ginsburg said. Couric 100% would’ve reported the remarks at the time. So, don’t buy the line that this was merely an editorial decision and not one made with an eye toward protecting a Democratic icon.
Revealing the juiciest details of Ginsburg’s remarks only after the fact in a memoir, and only after Ginsburg has passed, and then characterizing the matter as some sort of “let’s have a conversation” moment for broader media — well, this is called self-promotion. And this is all Couric has ever been about: promotion — that and political activism.
