Does Couric Read Her Scripts?

Katie Couric should start reading her scripts before 6:30pm.

On June 4, Couric began slapping news editor Jerry Cipriano “over and over and over again” on the arm because the word sputum was included in her CBS Evening News script, Joe Hagan reports.

Couric apparently didn’t notice the word in her script until she was reading it off the teleprompter. Here’s video of the broadcast. After the first commercial break, Couric turns to the story of Andrew Speaker‘s drug-resistant tuberculosis.

“Doctors at a Denver hospital said today his sputum has tested negative twice for TB bacteria,” Couric read, stumbling over the word sputum.

A CBS insider says “Katie does not read her news copy until right before the air, like around 6:20. Then she expects all of her underlings to jump through hoops and change things on the fly.”

The insider says Cipriano is getting a lot of e-mails about the now-infamous incident…