Dear Katie,
We never were formally introduced, nor did we hang out together, but we both were in the class of '79 at the University of Virginia.
A friend of mine alerted me that someone from my class was the new host of the Today Show, so I looked you up in Corks and Curls and recognized you. I remembered you as the friendly, very pretty girl, who always smiled and said, "Hey," when I passed you, occasionally first year, on the pedestrian bridge over Emmet Street.
I watched you religiously and thought you were clever, funny, and upbeat. When you chose to go to CBS Evening News, I started watching the CBS Evening News. If I am in a restaurant that has the TV on between 6:30 pm and 7, I ask the staff to turn to your newscast.
I have an apology to make to you that is long overdue. I did something very inelegant and rude to you at our reunion. I spotted you on the lawn with your friends, and I whipped out my camera and snapped a photo, without asking permission. All of our classmates nearby told me off for acting like a papparazzo, but I didn't do it to invade your privacy, I thoughtlessly did it, because my young daughter believed the sun rose and set over you, and I thought she would enjoy having your photo.
I understand how mistakes can happen with reporting when in a rush, because I made one, myself, recently, here on the DailyKos, for which I issued an apology.
For what it's worth, I am a big fan of yours. I thought you did a bang up job interviewing George H. W. Bush during the tour of the White House.
I am upset that some people are dissing you for the editing snafu on your interview with John McCain. I don't believe it was your fault. I don't believe that you had anything to do with it.
I think that you are caught between a rock and a hard place now that CBS News Senior V.P. Friedman issued this response:
The report was edited under extreme time constraints and one piece of tape was put in the wrong order. Fortunately, this did not in any way distort what Senator McCain was saying.
As DailyKos contributor, BarbinMD, points out, in her story, CBS News Said What?,
Perhaps Mr. Friedman can explain how replacing McCain's incorrect claim about when the "Anbar Awakening" began and his mocking of Obama for not knowing this "matter of history," with a contemptible attack on Obama's patriotism didn't distort what McCain said.
Paul Friedman's statement falls way short of the high standards of journalism we've come to expect from the Columbia Broadcasting System network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Katie Couric.
I admired your courage to show your colonoscopy on the Today Show, which saved many lives. You exhibited selfless heroism then, and you will be a hero to American journalism & CBS Evening News now, if you air the actual answer to your question, instead of the answer shown your viewing audience that the editors inserted from a completely different question.
The fact that McCain did not understand the sequence of events he discussed about the Iraq War is important to the American people as they prepare to choose a new leader.
Mistakes in judgment like that need to be known, just like the mistakes in the editor's booth need to be known, in order for us to have a working democracy.
Information is the currency of democracy.
~ T.J., founder of our alma mater.
If editing out gaffes by one candidate and inserting an attack on the other candidate is now our standard currency for information in this country, then I'm afraid our democracy is well on its way to bankruptcy.
Sincerely yours,
Cindy
p.s. Wahoo Wah!