KATIE COURIC - CRITICS DUMP ON COURIC FOR EDWARDS INTERVIEW

CRITICS DUMP ON COURIC FOR EDWARDS INTERVIEW

Criticism of Katie Couric's interview with Sen. John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth on 60 Minutes Sunday night flooded Internet political websites and blogs Monday, with many writers taking Couric to task for couching her own opinions about Edwards's decision to remain in the race -- despite his wife's cancer diagnosis -- in questions beginning with the words "Some people say that ..." On the liberal Huffington Post website, writer Nora Ephron jibed: "'Some people' are saying that Katie Couric went too far on 60 Minutes. I don't actually know who those people are, because I haven't done any reporting on it. Why bother? 'Some people' must be saying it." Still others objected to the fact that Couric never mentioned her own decision to plug along with her career after her late husband, Jay Monahan, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Couric "pretended not to know what [the Edwardses] were going through," Paul Brownfield remarked in the Los Angeles Times. But Dan Goldberg wrote on the Columbia Journalism Review website, "Couric asked nothing that was off-limits. Television journalists should challenge interviewees; just because that rarely happens does not mean it isn't supposed to." And Senator Edwards himself came to Couric's defense, saying that she "asked questions the American people are asking themselves, and I think they were completely legitimate questions. ... I thought they were tough, but they were fair."

27/03/2007