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CBS is taking heat for slimming down a photo of its new prime-time anchor with digital effects, after a retouched photograph of Katie Couric appeared this week in a magazine distributed to CBS stations and American Airlines flights.

The photograph in the September issue of Watch! made Couric look about 20 pounds thinner. The original photo, taken in May and showing Couric at her real weight, had been circulated to the media as an official photo.

CBS’s new anchor said she didn’t know about the manipulation until she saw the magazine.

“I liked the first picture better because there’s more of me to love,” Couric, who left NBC’s Today show to start her new job at CBS next week, told the Daily News.

Gil Schwartz, executive vice-president of communications for CBS Corp., told The Associated Press Wednesday that he attributed the alteration to an overzealous photo editor.

He said the broadcaster’s photo department has assured him it won’t happen again.

Manipulation of magazine photos is very common, Leonard Steinhorn, professor of media studies at American University in Washington, D.C., told CTV Newsnet on Wednesday.

“Open up a women’s magazine for example,” Steinhorn said. “Well, that model you see in the ad has no resemblance to what the model looks like in real life because all (sorts of) things are airbrushed out.”

The public has a responsibility to “learn how to decode these things and figure out what a manipulation is and what it isn’t,” he said. “We have to be smarter how we choose among them.”

Steinhorn said he doesn’t blame Couric for the photo.

“This is advertising but hopefully it is no way representative of what she would do in her news operation,” he said.

While editing a promotional photo of a person who provides news may be ham-handed and inappropriate, it needs to be put into the context of an advertising culture, he said.

On television, for example, images are presented in dramatic and compelling ways to make them more visually interesting, “because that’s what television is all about.”

“For example, your viewers … might think that I’m sitting here with the Capital behind me,” he said, referring to the oversize photo of the U.S. Capital behind him that serves as a backdrop. “But it’s not, it’s an image of the capital behind me.”

Steinhorn said he doesn’t think media distort truth on purpose. But media are consumers of products stages by the public relations industry, and this results in a “strange sort of alliance — almost like two scorpions in a bottle.”

“The PR industry designs (and) stages settings and backgrounds and images that the news media consumes and shows on their news all the time,” he said.

CBS, who lured Couric from NBC, has spent millions on marketing to let viewers know she’s starting her new job as an anchor at CBS on Sept. 5.

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Shortly after the rumors about his marriage breaking apart starting running around, Springsteen decided to personally clarify the situation.

In a statement made public on his website, Springsteen clearly explained everything.

” I hesitate to use this Web site for anything personal, believing it should remain a place where fans of my music can come free of the distractions that occasionally arise with the rest of my job. However, due to the unfounded and ugly rumors that have appeared in the papers over the last few days, I felt they shouldn’t pass without comment,” he wrote.
“Patti and I have been together for 18 years — the best 18 years of my life. We have built a beautiful family we love and want to protect and our commitment to one another remains as strong as the day we were married.”

53 year-old Scialfa, is the mother of his three children as well as a vocalist who sings with Springsteen and the E Street Band and who has released two albums of her own.

After the break-up rumors started to fly around, Springsteen and his wife showed up at the Antique Center of Red Bank in New Jersey.
“They’ve shopped in here for 20 years, and they were the same couple they were 20 years ago,” saleslady Judy Barnaby told Lowdown yesterday.
“Patti said everything was fine. She said her friends were more upset than she was.”

“Bruce was strumming an old guitar, and Patti was strumming an old mandolin, and they were singing and cuttin’ up and having a good time. They were holding hands and kissing and carrying on.” Barnaby declared in an interview afterwards.

Reports said that their relationship was “on the rocks” and they were “virtually living separate lives”. Not even Springsteen’s mother in law had an idea about what was going on. “I don’t know anything about it” she said.

Other friends of the couple are not sure the marriage is over. “He’s just a really big flirt,” another friend told the Post. “There’s nothing going on.”

“The Boss” was spotted in the company of a mystery woman at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

Apparently it was said that he got involved in a relationship with a “..stunning 9/11 widow” after he organized a telethon- America: A Tribute to Hero’s, where they met. Her children attend the Ranney School in Tinton Falls with Springsteen and Scialfa’s children, according to the report.

Regarding his relationship with Scialfa, an unidentified friend said “They’re separated, but everyone has been sworn to secrecy. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

But another friend added: “Bruce and Patti are very much partners. They go at it a lot and fight, but they also work at it a lot… Patti is a strong woman. They are not going anywhere.”

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