Just this month, Leslie Stahl was making ink for helping launch WOWOWOW.com with some of her girlfriends. Around this time last year, however, her ink was stained red with rumors she was behind a slew of Katie Couric-bashing leaks. And now, more crimson, this time for a March 2006 60 Minutes report she bludgeoned, with misleading information, made up facts, and conspiracy theories.

In reporting on hedge fund companies who use negative press to drive down the stock price of a company they’re looking to take over on the cheap, Stahl fingered SAC Capital of doing exactly that with pharmaceutical giant Biovail Corp. SAC, Stahl alleged, was having negative items about the company planted in order to convince shareholders they needed to dump their shares.

Only problem? The lawsuit filed by Biovail accusing SAC of doing just that was the real frivolous part of all this.

In fact, it was Biovail who was guilty of the misdeeds; the SEC on Monday sued the company for “repeatedly overstated earnings and hid losses in order to deceive investors” and “actively misled investors and analysts about the reasons for the company’s poor performance.” (Biovail has settled for $10 million, without admitting wrongdoing.)

So all the while 60 Minutes was warning small-time shareholders about the evil SAC and its kin, it was the company whose defense CBS came to that was guilty of fleecing investors. And they should’ve known: When 60 Minutes ran its story, Biovail was already under SEC investigation.

Stahl refused to make herself available for comment; 60 Minutes said it stands by its story.

You forgot the lady-powered WOWoWOW.com launched over the weekend? Shame! Now you’re going to have to spend your morning catching up on the items you missed.

Like Leslie Stahl’s cat burglary (they found the alleged culprit!), Lilly Tomlin reprinting a 1943 magazine article aimed at men hiring women, and a call-and-response session about which four women you’d like to see adorn Mt. Rushmore.

Ahem. Sorry for needlessly sounding the alarm.

That Katie Couric’s troubles have erupted yet again over the past two weeks is no surprise to television news insiders.

First there was Gail Shister’s bomb in the Philadelphia Inquirier, where Katie’s future at the helm of the CBS Evening News was vehemently questioned — and undermined by anonymous CBS insiders. Then Roger Friedman went and fingered Bob Scheiffer and Leslie Stahl as the sources behind Gail’s item, citing their disdain for the anchor.

So why is the insider hatchet job going down yet again?

Because that Katie Couric’s Notebook flap wasn’t a big enough scandal for those leading the pack.

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Roger Friedman’s outting of Bob Scheiffer as a Katie Couric bad PR plant continues to reverberate. In his FoxNews.com column yesterday, Friedman fingered Schieffer as the CBS insider behind Katie Couric’s publicity troubles — ratings, on-set tension, feuding with CBS’ in-house PR diva Gil Schwartz, producer hopping rationales. The evidence of Schieffer’s doings: His airtime on the CBS Evening News has been decreasing. Or something.

Schieffer is cited as the source behind Gail Shister’s Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday column – the front page, very-insider article from the woman who just had her TV industry column canned – where she laid out claims that CBS execs feel Katie’s hiring was an “an expensive, unfixable mistake” and that she could be gone after the 2008 presidential election.

Not that those sentiments aren’t common knowledge at this point.

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