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She was the golden girl on TV whose questions burst Sarah Palin’s bubble, the highest-paid morning news anchor who got on the tough evening news, and the broadcaster who once noted that an interviewer must “know when you are going to be loaded for the bear” – be tough.
But now, after excerpts from an autobiography leaked to news outlets, Katie Couric has lifted the veil on the underlying politics, personalities and infighting that accompanied the rise of the former presenter of The evening news from NBC Today Show and CBS.
Couric targets former coworkers, lovers, friends and professional enemies in harsh terms, dismissing the sexist character of the perky Girl Next Door that has been forced upon him for decades.
Couric’s list of complaints is as long as it is explicit. According to the New York Post, which obtained a copy of his revealing memoir Going There, which is slated for release later this month. Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of Couric, told the outlet that the book was “heartfelt, hilarious and very honest.”
On 500 pages, Couric, 64, would have a review for almost everyone, by Martha Stewart – “a little healthy humility (prison will do that …) to develop a sense of humor”; Prince Harry – cigarettes and alcohol seem to ‘seep out of every pore’; industry colleagues like Deborah Norville – “relentless perfection”. But she also reveals some of the appalling behaviors of her peers, including the late CNN interviewer Larry King, who she writes gave her a “lunge” on a couch.
She holds her most scathing review for ABC Good Morning America presenter Diane Sawyer. Couric says Sawyer was so desperate to beat her in the morning ratings war that she said, “This woman needs to be stopped.”
“I loved getting under Diane’s skin,” she writes. She says Sawyer was everything she wasn’t – tall, blonde, with a voice “full of money”. Among his most damaging criticisms, Sawyer took advantage of a clearly troubled Whitney Houston in an interview in which the singer was put in a position to defend her crack use.
“There was a very fine line between a revealing interview and the exploitation of troubled, often traumatized people in the service of vulgar treats and sensational sound clips,” Couric writes.
In blunt language that might shock some readers, Couric jokingly wonders who Sawyer “must have blown” to score a big interview with a woman who had given birth to twins at 57. She adds, “I’m pretty sure I speak for Diane. when I say that none of us have ever resorted to a real fellatio to get an interview. But we both got into the metaphorical genre – flattering gatekeepers, family members, and anyone standing in the way of a big bang.
But in many ways, Couric’s dazzling book summons a world that has to a large extent ceased to exist: where the best TV presenters were the “voice of God” to Americans stuck in front of their televisions and consuming news. ‘a handful of networks. First cable TV and then the Internet put an end to it for a long time, firmly shifting online news consumption and dealing a heavy blow to nighttime news broadcasts.
Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, says he’s struck by how the names in the book seem so distant – at a time when network newscasters had greater influence on culture.
“As vicious as it may be, it seems to date from a more innocent time. Hearing this nasty sort of thing backstage sounds almost quaint and harkens back to a time when television journalism was a whole different thing, ”Thompson said.
While cautioning that reporting on the book’s content is by definition second-hand, Thompson points out that the stories Couric tells are already in the retrospective fiction universe – “one memoir after the television version of it.”
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For some, the most telling aspect of the leaks is a passage involving Ashleigh Banfield, a young MSNBC correspondent by whom Couric felt professionally threatened. It reveals how the sexist attitudes of the television industry in which women struggled to thrive could reward competition – not cooperation – among rising female stars.
“For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing,” Couric wrote. “I had heard that her father told whoever would listen that she was going to replace me. In this environment, mentoring sometimes feels like self-sabotage.
Friday, Banfield appeared on his show to set the record straight as to whether Couric really gave him “the cold shoulder.” She later told the New York Post, “Her words really touched me. She was my North Star. I’ve always considered her to be one of the bravest presenters… at a time when we were all called bimbos. She was the best morning show host ever. I am just stunned.
Norville also reacted to Couric’s description: “I’m just too stunned and frankly hurt to comment,” she said. Sawyer has yet to comment.
The passage, says Thompson, communicates “a sense of the pathological nature of television news then, and perhaps not now that there is no more room at the top for women.” The same, he says, can be said for the Diane Sawyer anecdote.
“Katie Couric, it seems, relates what it was and what it was like to be a woman in the news at the time. The situation she found herself in was such that a lot of insecurities and behaviors she has engaged in are exactly what one would expect in such unequal situations.
The thing to remember, he adds, is that she rose from the top-rated morning news show to sit in what had once been the headquarters of the evening news from Walter Cronkite.
“Even when she was at the top of her game it felt like the way she was portrayed and therefore judged in gender terms typical of a sexist TV news industry. The cheerful, friendly image of someone you could talk to across the garden fence is something she’s been trying to dispel for a long time, ”Thompson said.
Couric’s heartfelt memoirs might well understand this.
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