Yahoo stunned by Couric mess

NEWS industry veterans are sniping that Yahoo was caught seriously off-guard by Katie Couric’s dodgy editing scandal.

Company insiders reveal that an emergency meeting of senior executives was rapidly convened after it emerged that eight seconds of silence had been added to an interview in her documentary, “Under the Gun” — which she made outside of her Yahoo role — making it seem as if anti-gun-control activists were stumped by a question.

But Yahoo didn’t launch a formal investigation into why their “global anchor” ended up having to publicly apologize for the misleading footage. Couric said in a statement that she had asked di- rector Stephanie Soechtig about why she had inserted the silence, and added, “I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously.”

Major network insiders are stunned that Yahoo didn’t hold a postmortem before continuing to publish Couric’s work. Said a senior staffer at a Big Three network, “Any time there’s a mistake here, there’s a thorough review and consequences where they’re appropriate. You look at the system and say, ‘How did this happen and how do we prevent it from happening again?’ I don’t think any of that happened at Yahoo.”

A different source said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer expressed support for Couric’s handling of the situation during a recent conference call.

Meanwhile, there was another awkward moment when Yahoo Finance posted a story — which had been automatically uploaded from Fortune — with the headline, “Here’s Why Katie Couric’s Eight-Second Editing Mistake Is Such a Big Deal.” But an insider said that however uneasy the optics, Yahoo’s hands are tied, because it has already been chastised for changing editorial that criticized major advertiser Quicken Loans.

“I’m sure it drove Marissa crazy, but they can’t just scrub that kind of thing anymore,” said a source.