Katie Couric says 2008 Palin interview would have opposite impact today

Katie Couric says her 2008 interview with then-Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin would likely be a “badge of honor” for the former Alaska governor if it took place today.

In that sit-down, Palin responded to a question about which newspapers and magazines she reads with an enthusiastic “all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years,” leading to widespread lampooning.

{mosads}Couric denied Palin’s later charge that the question was intended as “gotcha journalism,” telling BuzzFeed News in an interview published Thursday that it came up spontaneously as the two shot b-roll.

“I’m sort of interested in how people get set in their ideological ways, what really establishes their world view and what have they consumed that made them have these positions,” Couric said. “Since she’s very conservative, was she going to say William F. Buckley? Was she going to say she was really influenced by the Bible? I don’t know what she was going to say.”

Couric speculated that if the interview took place in 2019, “I think there’s such a reverse snobbery about intellectuals that I think it would almost be seen as a badge of honor,” adding, “I think that’s really concerning.”

Couric told BuzzFeed News the same phenomenon has made people more skeptical of scientists and academics and in turn has driven skepticism about climate change.

“I feel like sometime everyone gets caught up with the tweet of the day or the mudslinging that’s going on between a dead John McCain, or Meghan McCain, and the president, and it takes time away from the policy discussions,” Couric told the outlet.