BY TAYLOR MARSH
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Michael Calderone writes about the top ten media blunders of 2008. Number three has got to be my favorite, complete with “Daily Show” clip. But this isn’t one of them, because it belongs in the big win category.
Nobody in news was heading faster downhill than Katie Couric. From 2007 onward, the reviews were bad, especially the interview with the Edwardses, with Ms. Couric rumored to have one foot out the door. As far as I could tell she’d proved only one thing: She was in over her head.
Then along came a woman named Sarah.
The McCain campaign thought Katie didn’t have it, so they served little Sarah up.
Deftly, transparently, and kindly, Couric revealed Palin in an interview that changed the trajectory of Sarah Palin’s power, ignited a bomb under John McCain, and brought the CBS news anchor the respect she couldn’t buy with all the built in gravitas of the nightly news desk. The genius of the interview was that Couric let Palin do all the work.
Onlookers did a cartoon double take.
Sarah looked like an ignorant fool answering questions from Couric that didn’t go anywhere near gotcha, with an outcome no one expected. It was the beginning of the Palin unraveling.
Now Ms. Couric gets a new chance to prove she can handle the nightly news anchor spot. We’ll have to wait to see what develops from here, but Couric made it happen herself and caught everyone off guard, no one more so than the McCain camp. It wounded the Republican presidential ticket like a switchblade slice, from which Palin never recovered. It was simply dubbed “The Couric Interview.” When people talk about it we all know we’re talking about the day Palin went down. The day Couric finally got her pay off.
It is quite simply the save of the year.
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