News executives and network publicists have been distracting themselves from this summer’s seriously depressing or otherwise alarming world events by passing around and poring over bound galleys of The News Sorority, veteran journalist Sheila Weller’s gossipy chronicle of the rise of three of television news’ best-known women.
In Weller’s narrative—which, as the subtitle indicates, aspires to document “the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News”—Couric comes off as brash, striving and self-absorbed.
Sawyer is a Machiavellian, often-inscrutable workaholic who uses her seductive charm and good looks to professional advantage and torments news producers with her relentless perfectionism and insecurity.
Amanpour is the reigning queen of the warzone, more physically courageous and resourceful than her male colleagues in perilous combat situations, but with an occasionally off-putting sense of moral superiority.
Some highlights:
- Sawyer’s famous rivalry with Barbara Walters for ratings-grabbing interview subjects was akin to mortal combat. “Barbara and Diane were determined to kill each other—to wipe each other off the face of the earth,” says an ABC News staffer.
- When Diane beat Katie on an interview with a 57-year-old woman who’d given birth to twins, Katie mused aloud, according to a person who heard the comment: “I wonder who she blew this time to get it.”
- When Couric became the first woman to front a network evening news program alone at CBS, she wooed iconic anchor Walter Cronkite over a couple of dinners, and the old man’s blessing was such that he recorded the introduction to the broadcast. Later Cronkite privately expressed discomfort with Couric’s allegedly soft-news style.
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