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It’s a time of revelations and taunts, shrewd returns and frightening allegations.
Some of the biggest names in the media are reinventing themselves, quitting or just settling their accounts.
The hottest story comes from Katie Couric, whose memoir everyone leaked to the Daily Mail. While the full book may read differently from these excerpts, it’s fair to say that his razor-sharp attacks on large numbers of people are very much at odds with his upbeat character on the air.
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Couric gets points for her franchise admitting she froze potential rivals while she was flying high on NBC’s “Today” show. To befriend them would be “self-sabotage,” she writes, citing Ashleigh Banfield as an example: There was “always someone younger and cuter around the corner”. (Banfield told NewsNation “It hurt me deeply.… It saddens me that we weren’t able to collaborate.… Why do women think there is no place at the top?)
Katie Couric and Matt Lauer are seen on the set of NBC’s “Today” show, January 6, 2017 (Getty Images)
But why blame Deborah Norville, whom she replaced on the NBC morning show, by saying that audiences didn’t like her “relentless perfection”?
Couric vows to take the blame for why her stint as the “CBS Evening News” host ended with lower ratings and disappointment. She says she faced an “insurgency” on CBS, feeling “besieged, defensive, misunderstood … like Hillary Clinton.”
I interviewed Couric extensively during this time for my book “Reality Show”, and she’s a talented reporter who tried to force too many changes too soon on the show once directed by Walter Cronkite. She blew news stories and did a nine-minute interview with Michael J. Fox that best suited the morning meal. She also faced ludicrous expectations, in part because of her $ 15 million annual salary and some sexist coverage.
Couric admits a few “unforced errors” and says she shouldn’t have done a glamorous renovation of her office.
In controversial passages published Thursday, Couric reveals that she backed her former co-host Matt Lauer after NBC fired her in 2017 over allegations of serial sexual harassment.
“I am crushed,” she wrote to Lauer. “I love you and I care about you deeply. I’m here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days to come.”
Couric says that “my heart sank” when she read the “horrible things” that Lauer had done, but that it seemed “ruthless to abandon her”. She is sure to draw criticism from those who think she is less than sympathetic to employees who complained that Lauer had mistreated them.
After CBS, she hosted a daytime talk show and did a gig with Yahoo, among others. She has the right to tell her story as she sees it. But why ransack ex-boyfriends, including one she calls a “manual narcissist”? This trait (ahem) is of course unknown in the TV news.
Jon Stewart returns
Jon Stewart, meanwhile, kicked off his Apple TV show on Thursday, and it’s fair to say it’s not a “Daily Show” – and it’s not meant to be.
While there are a few jokes and gags, “The Problem With Jon Stewart” is more like his incarnation as an admirable fighter for federal benefits for 9/11 first responders. It gets pretty serious, more in the sense of his former disciple John Oliver.
Jon Stewart is seen during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. (CBS / The Late Show)
The first episode begins with a staff meeting which is taped and, like the “Daily Show”, is motivated by Stewart’s outrageous feeling. The 40-minute show has a long setup on how many servicemen have been exposed to toxic chemicals from fireplaces, and then brings together a panel of those who have suffered the ill effects – key to the new approach.
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Stewart ends by going to the Department of Veterans Affairs and politely but firmly urging Secretary Denis McDonough on what to do about this problem.
The comedian ends by saying that most people won’t watch the show, just clips online – he jokes that people don’t even know how to subscribe to Apple TV – and maybe he has. raison. This kind of immersion into issues won’t appeal to a mass audience, and Stewart knows it. He is more determined to make a difference than to make people laugh.
Problems at Ozy
And there are huge problems at Ozy Media, which just lost the services of longtime BBC presenter Katty Kay. She resigned following allegations she described as “serious and deeply disturbing”.
The company, founded by Carlos Watson, a former MSNBC presenter, has been rocked by revelations from New York Times columnist Ben Smith. In a conference call with Goldman Sachs, which was worth an investment of $ 40 million, he reported, the Watson co-founder posed as a YouTube executive – apparently with a digitally altered voice – And explained how well Ozy’s videos performed online.
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Watson tried to erase that, claiming his partner had mental health issues. But a major investor has since bailed out Ozy, co-founder Samir Rao is on leave, and the company’s board is hiring a law firm to investigate its business activities.
Watson told The Wrap that the Times article was an “ad hominem bull attack.” But deceiving a Wall Street bank with identity theft is not a minor offense. Watson apologized to Goldman Sachs and Google, owner of YouTube, alerted the FBI.
It is, to say the least, an eventful period in the media world.
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