Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Plagiarism or something worse?

Faces are red at CBS News over a segment of Katie Couric's Notebook that the network now acknowledges was taken almost word-for-word from a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow.

Notebook is a column-like segment in which Evening News anchor Couric allegedly opines about things that have caught her attention. I say allegedly, because CBS now says that a producer -- not Couric -- wrote the piece after the idea for it came up at a meeting about what the Notebook should include. CBS fired the producer, whom it declined to name.

The question is, which is most embarrassing: The revelation that someone at CBS plagiarized a column from the Wall Street Journal, or the revelation that the network's top reporter doesn't even write her own column?

And network brass wonder why CBS News comes in third in the big three's nightly news race.

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