Tabloid Auto De Fe

by digby

Many people are wondering what in the hell was up with Katie Couric when she hammered John and Elizabeth Edwards last night on 60 Minutes. (Taylor Marsh wrote the definitive post on her egregious conduct, here.)

K-Drum thinks she was just trying to prove her "serious journalist" bonafides, which it seems to me should have been a pre-requisite for her current job, but there you go.

I think she's just a mean, gossipy, twit who likes to put sick people in the dock. Why do I make such a harsh accusation?

Well:


Fox told Couric, "At this point now, if I didn't take medication I wouldn't be able to speak."

The portion of the interview they broadcast was quite decent. But you can see the whole interview here --- and listen to Katie Couric push him over and over again on the burning question of whether he manipulated his medication and ask him whether he should have re-scheduled the shoot when his symptoms were manifested as they were. And she does it while she's sitting directly across from him watching him shake like crazy. Her questions imply that it was in poor taste or manipulative as if he can magically conjure a film crew to catch him in one of the fleeting moments where he doesn't appear too symptomatic. The press seems to truly believe that it is reasonable to be suspicious of him showing symptoms of a disease that has him so severely in its clutches that if he doesn't take his medication his face becomes a frozen mask and he cannot even talk.


Sorry. The woman is an insensitive, ratings-hungry tabloid gossip, not a journalist. That's why she makes the big bucks.


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