CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric and medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook spent much of their noon editorial meeting today teaching colleagues how to save lives.
Two weeks after the their colleague Tim Russert died from a heart attack at NBC’s Washington offices, LaPook, with Couric as his assistant, demonstrated to about 100 CBS News staffers how to use a portable defibrillator. Couric and LaPook are spearheading the installations of the defibs in every newsroom and bureau at CBS. The meeting, which was watched by staffers in New York as well as at the CBS News bureaus around the country and in London, ended in a round of applause for their efforts.
We’re told the demonstration was informative enough to employees, that it may end up as a segment on the Early Show. CBS has about 16 of the portable defibrillators around the CBS Broadcast Center.