I’d think she’d want to have that fixed…
Today Katie Couric made all of her defenders look just as bad as I said they were.
“I can understand the objection of people who did have an issue about it,” Couric said at TheWrap’s Power Women Breakfast in New York this morning, when asked to address the intentionally deceptive editing in “Under the Gun,‘ the anti-gun documentary she produced. “Having said that, I think we have to focus on the big issue of gun violence. It was my hope that, when I approached this topic, that this would be a conversation starter.”
She then said that the documentary will not be re-edited to fix the lie it contains.
This is signature significance: all by itself, it proves beyond a shadow if a doubt that Katie Couric is a dishonest journalist. No more evidence is needed, for an honest journalist would never make this choice. Not once, not ever.
“The objection of people who did have an issue about it” clearly states that Couric herself had no “issue with it,” meaning that, as I wrote, she only regrets the controversy, not the lie.But, oh, she does understand those who believe that documentaries and journalists shouldn’t ask questions and then edit the response so the real answer is eliminated, distorted or obscured. That’s nice, don’t you think? A journalist who understands those old fogies, traditionalists, ethicists and others who think she and her colleagues should tell the truth.
She wants to focus, though, on the big issue. Never mind those little lies: what are they when compared to all the gun violence? This is just a distraction, nit-picking by critics when the big issue is what matters.
Look:
If a producer of a documentary acknowledges that what appears in it is both unfair to those who were interviewed and misleading to the audience, then the only alternative is to re-edit the documentary. If the misleading sequence is not removed, then it will continue to mislead. The decision to allow a misleading segment to continue to mislead even after the misleading edit has been identified, means, and can mean nothing else, that the producer, as well as the director, want it to continue to mislead, don’t care if future audiences are misled, and believe dishonesty is an appropriate tool of advocacy.
This is what Katie Couric told us today about her values, her trustworthiness, and those of anyone who hires her or supports her.
Remember.
Ethics Alarms 
“[D]ishonesty is an appropriate tool of advocacy.” Yahtzee!
The term “journalist,” used in reference to Katie Couric, is only a compounding and aggravation of lying already perpetrated, a deflection from the truth of her support for lying to advance to certain ends by any means. The term should never again be used in reference to Katie Couric.
Couric is one of a class of arrogant, self-righteous control freaks, who suffer the delusion that they are so much smarter than all the rest of the unwashed masses whom they propagandize, they are thus entitled to lie all they want.
Someone ought to adapt Congresscritter Vela’s letter to Donald Trump about “that wall,” and send it to Katie Couric with explicit instructions as Vela provided in his closing, about what to do with “that crockumentary.” Maybe it would show up on the next worldwide look at the inside of her colon. Let Fox News do its own crockumentary on her, and title it “Under Her Buns.”
That was my first thought too – Wait, she said that *she* had an issue with it in her apology.
Dishonesty and invincible ignorance are the foundations of the anti-gun campaign.
Jack. A question. If Ms. Couric corrected the deceptive edit in the film and then hired you as a consultant to help her rehabilitate her career, what would you advise her to do? And I’m not asking this to pick a fight, make a point or start an argument. How can professional ethical lapses be properly remedied? Clearly in this instance. I don’t think a corrective edit and a good apology would be sufficient. Should she quit working and become a pro bono lecturer on journalistic ethics? Maybe so, but I’d like your thoughts on the subject generally. Sometime when you have a chance.
Thinking…
Thanks in advance.
To quote Prof. Glenn Reynolds: “Just think of [fill in journalists] as Democrat operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.”
Couric is just re-purposing the “ends justify the means” argument in the form of, “I’m sorry if you feel badly about being unfairly made to look like a bunch of fools, but this issue is just too important. Making you look foolish is a small price to pay for raising awareness.” The deception begins with “I’m sorry.”
Honesty never enters into the equation; only the higher purpose, which is so important to Couric that ethical considerations are diminished to the irrelevance of a totally insincere “apology” by comparison. It’s all about activism, and ridding the world of the scourge of gun violence by any means.
How corrupted must one’s thinking be to embrace this philosophy? It’s bizarre, counter to everything almost any of us, including Couric most likely, were taught by our parents. My mother and father would be horrified if I ever made an argument as dishonest, self-serving and ethics-free as Couric does, and sorrowfully consider that they’d failed me. One could only hope her own parents, at least the ones who were alive when she was young, would be equally mortified.
Unfortunately, Couric herself seems to be a lost cause, but on the upside of that, she has a veritable megaton of company.
“He or she apologized” seems to be the the left’s new get out of jail free card, regardless of the worth of the “apology.” The claim seems to have been raised to the august level of an automatic, reliable, sure-fire talking point.
Why do “apologies” only work if you’re the right kind of person, though? Especially risible “apologies” like, “I’m awful sorry if the lies, unethical actions, and fraudulent misrepresentations of my work offended you, but starting a conversation on this subject is just soooo important.”
Yeah, rhetorical question. Sadly, we all know the answer too well.
If the term “conversation” were banned from contemporary discourse for a while, I wouldn’t be disappointed.