K-K-K-K-K-Katie

I haven't written a lot about my experience of 9/11, in part because it's really part of a much more formal essay, one I intend to write and sell. But there was an element of that day that I would like to share.

I was home from work on 9/11 and in the aftermath I spent all of my time glued to the television. I had several hundred channels and I flipped among them searching for new details. However whenever I found it all a little overwhelming, I flipped back to NBC for Katie Couric. Her reporting was dispassionate, yet soothing. Perhaps she filled some primal need for maternal comfort in me, but I found the men all slightly hysterical. From that moment on, Katie Couric became the person I wanted to turn to in times of national crisis.

Of course times change, and thankfully I'm growing which, means my needs change. I no longer rely on broadcast news for my information -- depending now on the ever-more reliable Internet, so I've lost touch with Katie Couric. I did not follow her to the CBS Evening News because I'm trying to live my life at that hour. But I've read about her difficulties in establishing her credibility as a major news anchor. In the news industry gaining the public's trust isn't easy, and it shouldn't be. Couric had spent fifteen years combatting the dismissive criticisms and labels of "America's Sweetheart" only to piss it all away with this incident.

Couric has shattered her credibility with a puff piece of journalism about her library card -- and at CBS of all places -- and in the role the journalistic icon Dan Rather vacated for similar reasons. The stupidity and waste is shocking.

Couric now has less credibility than Nancy Grace or Star Jones Reynolds, and probably fewer employment prospects. It will doubtless take a few months (I'm guessing no more than three,) but Couric will be dismissed, and she should be. At a time when this country needs to depend on its journalists; at a time when this country needs to hear a feminine perspective on the real issues of the day; at a time when there is a famine of integrity in the world -- all of which Couric embodied -- to plagiarize a personal essay is beyond stupid. It's criminally negligent.

Couric claims to have been unaware that the piece had been plagiarized, and that defense could offer her some cover if it had not been presented as a first-person memoir! Couric is a major journalist. She should be capable of writing her own memories, and she certainly should insist that anything that bears the stamp of her personal experience also bear the brand of authenticity.

Of course the disgrace of Katie Couric doesn't begin to compare to 9/11, but there is an element of disappointment and betrayal that makes me reflect on the comfort I received as Couric narrated the rescue efforts that day. I'm going to miss Katie Couric.