Katie Couric on Diane Sawyer: вЂI Wonder Whom She Blew This Time’
In a juicy brand brand new tell-all guide, Couric comes across as brash, striving, and self-absorbed, and Sawyer is really a Machiavellian, often-inscrutable workaholic.
Lloyd Grove
Editor most importantly
The Day-to-day Beast
The moment of truth is about to arrive—or at least a book-length facsimile thereof for Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Christiane Amanpour.
Information professionals and community publicists happen distracting on their own with this summer time’s seriously depressing or elsewhere world that is alarming by moving around and poring over bound galleys of this Information Sorority, veteran journalist Sheila Weller’s gossipy chronicle for the increase (and periodic stumbles) of three of tv news’ best-known women.
In Weller’s narrative—which, as the subtitle indicates, aspires to report “the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV Information”—Couric comes down as 
brash, striving, self-absorbed, and sometimes insensitive towards the realities faced by her less coworkers that are well-compensated yet steeled by individual tragedy (the cancer-related fatalities of her spouse and her sibling) and effective at big-hearted generosity.
Sawyer is really a Machiavellian, often-inscrutable workaholic who makes use of her seductive charm and apperance to expert benefit and torments news producers along with her relentless perfectionism and insecurity—an obvious result of a fraught relationship together with her judgmental, solid mom (whom once delivered the adult Sawyer as a self-flagellating death spiral, Weller writes, whenever she criticized exactly just how her television star daughter had made her bed).
Amanpour may be the reigning queen associated with the warzone, more actually courageous and resourceful than her male peers in perilous combat circumstances, but with an sporadically off-putting feeling of ethical superiority which, along side her posh Uk accent, sometimes renders her brittle and inaccessible to American audiences—a element which appears to have hampered her profession.
All three, in Weller’s account, are excellent journalists who possess risen up to the top their career through sheer skill, minds, and time and effort in a market whoever tradition, even yet in the 2nd ten years associated with the twenty-first century, stays significantly more than vestigially sexist. In a single representative anecdote, CBS Information Executive Vice President Paul Friedman publicly muses for an open sound line about which feminine anchor appears worse without makeup—Sawyer or Couric.
“I happened to be blown straight right straight back in my own seat,” a producer that is female Weller. “What made it happen say about a person in senior administration he shouldn’t say that, of their employer [Katie], out loud? which he didn’t understand”
The book that is expansive which operates to 471 pages sans index (the part which will truly function as the many closely look over by people within the biz), won’t become officially for sale until its Sept. 30 release date. But Weller along with her publisher, Penguin Press, have already been working overtime to build buzz—along by having an amount that is fair of publishing things on Facebook and distributing very early copies to preferred news outlets, like the day-to-day Beast.
*When Sawyer had been up for a task at CBS Information’ Washington bureau after years when you look at the press workplace in the Nixon White home after which assisting the disgraced president that is former their memoirs in San Clemente, Dan Rather advised CBS Information President Bill Small: “Don’t employ her!” Rather later admitted he’d been wrong.
*Sawyer’s longtime live-in boyfriend, investment banker (and previous and future diplomat) Richard Holbrooke (whom later married journalist Kati Marton), “did the dirty work with her,” a CBS staffer states, “and he drove everybody crazy… he’d call the professional producer [of the CBS Morning Information] each day to state, вЂWhy doesn’t Diane do have more to complete?’…”
*When 60 Minutes impresario Don Hewitt hired Sawyer for a plum perch on their Sunday that is top-rated show a prominent CBS producer explained her fast increase in this manner: “You gotta understand—the guys who own and run the networks all have the shiksa disease.”
*When Sam Donaldson, Diane’s co-anchor that is internally popular ABC’s Primetime mag show, came back from prostate cancer tumors surgery and did a actually grueling tale about a survivalist residing in the backwoods, certainly one of Weller’s ABC Information sources says, “Diane called everyone and stated, вЂThat had been a very terrible piece—let’s be sure it does not take place once again.’”
*Sawyer’s famous rivalry with Barbara Walters for ratings-grabbing meeting topics ended up being similar to mortal combat. “Barbara and Diane had been determined to destroy each other—to wipe each other from the face for the earth,” states an ABC Information staffer.
*After toiling at NBC Nightly Information and making to create a novel when he didn’t obtain the professional producer’s job, Ben Sherwood angled to operate Good America, where Sawyer was the lead anchor in the early 2000s morning. “Ben, who had been as cunning and seductive as Diane, actually wooed Diane,” claims an insider. “He had written her e-mails…вЂWhy did you try this?’ †right here’s where i believe you’re going incorrect.’ That’s exactly exactly how he wormed their way in.”
*After only 6 months of operating GMA, Sherwood left the task, formally to look after an ailing parent, but really because Sawyer had lost faith in him. “Ben is therefore weak,” she said independently.
*Sherwood fundamentally came back as president of ABC Information, having charmed community chief Anne Sweeney and Disney Chairman Bob Iger. “But now he wasn’t beholden to Diane,” claims a Sherwood pal. “With Ben, I don’t think he provides a rat’s ass” what Sawyer desires. “Ben’s gonna place it to her. She will spend dearly. She may have met her match in Ben.”