Amid recent behind-the-scenes drama and upheaval at 60 Minutes, veteran journalist Katie Couric has recalled her own frustrations while working on the show between 2006 and 2011. One particular moment that left a bad taste in her mouth was when Anderson Cooper “stole” her story and she felt “gaslit” afterwards.
Appearing on the latest episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Couric claimed that an unnamed executive producer with the program didn’t like working with her. “The head of 60 Minutes at the time, I think maybe because he wasn’t really consulted about bringing me over,” she said, per Entertainment Weekly, noting how she’d moved from NBC News to CBS News following her stint on the Today show.
“I was sort of seen as somebody from a different network coming in and sort of muddying the waters,” Couric continued. “I hadn’t come up in the CBS system. So I don’t know, he just didn’t like me.”
She recalled one particular incident when a story she pitched on Lady Gaga was initially rejected, only to be given to a different correspondent a year later.
“I always felt like 60 Minutes was a little behind on like, big cultural moments,” Couric said. “I said, ‘There’s this incredible singer and I think she’s gonna be the next Madonna. She’s so interesting. She went to Catholic school, but she’s so outrageous and she’s huge and she’s got, you know, a huge number one song. I think we should do a profile of this person: Lady Gaga.”
Couric said she made this pitch back in 2009 when Gaga landed her first number-one single with “Just Dance.” At the time, she was told, “It’s just not for us,” and the pitch was turned down. A year later, however, following Gaga’s hit records “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi,” and “Bad Romance,” the show suddenly wanted the interview.
“I was like, ‘Okay, well she’s kind of overexposed now,’” Couric recalled. “And I thought, you know, wouldn’t it be nice to get somebody right as they’re about to pop instead of a year later?”
Still, Couric was excited for the interview until she realized another reporter had been assigned the story. She remembered walking over to the CBS whiteboard and seeing written there, “Lady Gaga, Anderson Cooper.”
A Guide to Katie Couric’s Kids & Grandchildren
Related
A Guide to Katie Couric’s Kids & Grandchildren
“It made me crazy,” she said before revealing something similar happened years later when she was scheduled to interview then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She said the Statement Department called her producer, saying they were “very confused” because Scott Pelley and his team were asking about interviewing Clinton.
“So I go to [then-executive producer] Jeff Fager, and I say, ‘I thought you wanted me to do Hillary. You told me explicitly that you wanted to assign that story to me.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we decided to change things up.’ It made me insane,” Couric shared.
She said she was particularly frustrated that the changes were made behind her back. “Like, without even the decency to call me and say, ‘Guess what? We decided to reassign the story, and this is why,’” Couric added. “Talk about getting gaslit. I mean to me, that is the definition of it.”
Read the latest entertainment news on TV Insider.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
