Katie Couric Calls Out CNN: They Should Admit ‘Bad Decision’ to Let Chris Cuomo ‘Yuck it Up’ With His Brother During Pandemic

Katie Couric called on CNN to publicly recognize that they shouldn’t have let Chris Cuomo hold gag interviews with his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, just because it made for “good TV.”

Couric spoke to Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night to promote her new memoir, Going There, and she was once again questioned over her decision to omit Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism for national anthem-kneelers. Addressing her editorial decision-making at the time, Couric said the late Justice’s comments “bothered me” enough that she included it in the book because she felt the interview could’ve been handled better in retrospect.

“What I regret is that i didn’t ask a follow-up question and, ultimately, that I didn’t include it even after [Ginsburg’s aides] said she misspoke, she doesn’t really understand the intent of this action,” Couric said. “I think what I was trying to say is we all make judgment calls. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, sometimes our own human emotion gets involved in it.”

Couric spoke of how trust in the media is approaching an all-time low, and she said that the media can fix that by being more upfront whenever mistakes are made. She listed off several examples of media flubs in recent years, but she concluded by pointing to the interviews between the Cuomo brothers back in 2020, which were seen by many as a serious journalistic ethics breach.

The worst example, Couric pointed out, was the interview in which Chris Cuomo pulled out a massive cotton swab to tease his brother in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

“CNN should be able to say ‘we shouldn’t allow Chris Cuomo to yuck it up with his brother, the governor of New York, with a giant Q-Tip in the middle of the pandemic because it’s good TV,'” Couric said. “They should say ‘We made a bad decision. And that was wrong.’ I think it’s really important for people to acknowledge when they probably have erred the wrong way.”

Watch above, via CBS.

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