CBS anchor Katie Couric has been caught plagiarizing. In a video essay for the segment called "Katie's Notebook" (which sounds like the title of a Lifetime movie), Katie reflected on her memories of getting her first library card. Yawn. Apparently the piece heavily relied on a column by Jeffrey Zaslow that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month, but that didn't stop Katie from posting it on her blog.
CBS claims that Katie didn't actually write the plagiarized "personal" piece, despite it coming across as deeply personal, as apparently it's very common for first person commentaries to be written by unnamed staffers...not the anchor themselves. How lame is that? Sorry Katie, but if you had paid a bit more attention to your own personal stories, or used the power of the internet, you might have noticed that the "personal video essay" about your stupid library card had already been done. Last time I checked, it's the personal responsibility of each journalist to check and double check their work before sending it out into the world. But then again, if you're not even writing your own material, how could you check to make that it's correct, or hasn't been ripped off from someone else?