Quote · Call Her Daddy
Katie Couric: Sexism, Storytelling & Standing Up to Cancer
Where this was said
Sabotage at 60 Minutes: Lady Gaga, Hillary Clinton and Jeff Fager
At 37:09 · chapter starts 33:20
At CBS, Katie Couric's dream assignment had always been 60 Minutes. The show's executive producer Jeff Fager — who she believes resented her arrival as an outsider — routinely dismissed her ideas, then recycled them for male colleagues [1] — Katie Couric "Katie Couric pitched a Lady Gaga profile to 60 Minutes, was turned down, then watched Anderson Cooper get the assignment a year later. The …" 35:00 . She pitched Lady Gaga as 'the next Madonna' when the singer was still emerging; Fager passed. A year later, Anderson Cooper got the assignment. Then Fager explicitly told Couric to profile Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, even suggesting a focus on her work for women and girls globally. Couric got excited and started preparing — until her producer told her the State Department was fielding calls from Scott Pelley's team about the same story. When Couric confronted Fager, he shrugged and said 'we decided to change things up.' No call, no explanation. She learned her story was gone only because a State Department spokesperson mentioned it. She calls it, flat out, gaslighting.
Katie Couric pitched a Lady Gaga profile to 60 Minutes, was turned down, then watched Anderson Cooper get the assignment a year later. The same thing happened with her Hillary Clinton profile, quietly reassigned to Scott Pelley with no explanation. She only found out because the State Department called her producer.
