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CBS' Katie Couric: Inflated salary could fund 200 real News Reporters for network

By April MacIntyre Feb 3, 2010, 15:49 GMT

Salaries under siege- Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charles Gibson - Stand Up To Cancer - Arrivals - Kodak Theater - Hollywood, CA. USA © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

As newsrooms shrink and real reporters are given their walking papers, networks are having a harder time justifying enormous salary contracts for "personalities" to spearhead their news divisions.

Matt Drudge of DrudgeReport.com reports that CBS' anchorwoman and 60 MINUTES contributor Katie Couric (who pulls in $14+ million annually) may be downsized in salary.

Drudge writes that the CBS chieftain Les Moonves is putting the network on a cost-cutting diet, and no one is immune to the trimming. 

"She makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year!" says a producer to Matt Drudge.

"It's complete insanity...We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. Well, look at Katie!"

With the growing lack of real "in the trenches" reporting going on in all news rooms across the board, do you think Katie, Brian Williams, and other highly paid "faces" of news should sacrifice in salary to bolster their news divisions' real information gatherers? 

Or, is this more "attack the rich" mentality that FOX Business news morning anchor Stuart Varney claims is sweeping the USA, thanks to President Obama's policies?

Talk Back.