Opinion: Couric, JonBenet stories satiate news junkie appetite

Thank goodness that Katie Couric has finally taken over the “CBS Evening News” anchor position. The hype surrounding her move from NBC’s “Today Show” has been overwhelming. Face it, she will read the evening news for a TV network. She has not ascended to papal status as the hype would indicate.

Not being a daytime TV viewer, I’m mostly unaware of what happens on the “Today Show.” I know almost nothing about her journalistic credentials. I do know she is assuming the chair once occupied by journalistic icons Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Of course, she replaces Dan Rather, who was caught playing fast and loose with facts, a definite unpardonable newsroom transgression.

She may turn out to have newsperson superstar power; however, in no way can she live up to the publicity blizzard trumpeting her arrival. The thing about hype is that it can sometimes go awry. A case in point: the famed publicity photo of Couric that was touched up in a CBS promotional magazine to make her look 20 pounds lighter.

When the original photo was unearthed, network sources were apologetic, but it had already tarnished the massive promotion for the show. I saw the pictures side by side.

She looked fine in the original. The airbrush version made her look anorexic. If she were a man, would CBS have needed the trim-down job? Walter Cronkite was not really heavy, neither was he lean. No one airbrushed 20 pounds off of him.

If a news organization alters the look of its news anchor to make her look slimmer, what else might it alter?

On another news front, the Rusty Saber can’t allow the fiasco of the so-called confessed murderer of JonBenet Ramsey, John Mark Karr, to fade into obscurity without a comment. When news of his confession first broke, one would have thought Jimmy Hoffa had been found alive, living in a Swiss monastery.

The euphoric reporting indicated the long sought-after murderer of the child beauty queen was captured in, of all places, Bangkok, Thailand. Hearing that Karr was in Thailand for a sex-change operation was my first clue that something might be wrong with this guy’s story. But Mary Lou Lacy, Boulder, Colo., district attorney, said that Karr knew details about the crime that only the killer would know.

As it turned out, he knew facts that one might know having been totally saturated in the constant media coverage of the case.

I have no expertise in criminal investigation, but the moment I saw Karr on TV, I knew he couldn’t have secretly traveled to Boulder, Colo., somehow established a relationship with the child, slipped into the house, committed this horrible crime, escaped, and skillfully eluded investigators since 1996. The deer-in-the-headlights look about him seemed to say, “I’ll confess to whatever crime you would like.” As it was, no one seemed deterred in their quest to close the case when Karr’s former wife said he couldn’t have been at the murder scene; he was in Alabama and Georgia during the 1996 Christmas season.

The video image of Karr living it up in first class on the flight from Thailand to Los Angeles was filled with high comedy, but it seemed to have little to do with the return of a child killer to finally face the music.

In hindsight, the Boulder district attorney probably wishes she had requested DNA results and interrogated him rather than going through the media circus of indicting and extraditing him to Boulder. His release came suddenly when – surprise – his DNA didn’t match that found on the child’s body. In a fleeting moment, Karr disappeared from the media radar screen.

I doubt that anyone knows why he so readily confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. Hopefully, he will get some help, which he seems to desperately need.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]