Was Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford's character) modeled after Deborah Norville

[TMC]

To give you a better idea of what I'm referring to or talking about (just like apparently, Murphy Brown was based on/inspired by Linda Ellerbee):
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-...1_murphy-brown

TV's news-and-information programs are themselves often so bizarre that there's little "Murphy Brown" could do to top the absurdity of the real thing. Here is a field where life and sitcom inevitably merge, with the former sometimes seeming to copy the latter.

"Here's something we didn't lift," said English, referring to an episode in which "FYI" airhead Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford) was the surprise winner of a journalism award, which she accepted by giving a speech praising Murphy: "You're like an old oak tree, spreading your gnarled branches, giving life to the new shoots underneath."

That came before the blubbery "Today" segment in which that "old oak tree" Jane Pauley announced she was leaving the show, and her successor, Deborah Norville (who happens to look like Corky), went on and on in emotionally lauding the woman she was supplanting.

"In essence it was the same speech as Corky's," English said. Then she paused. "To see Deborah Norville crying buckets . . . she seemed sincere, but . . . I don't know."