When Brian Williams joined Twitter in September of 2010, I decided to have some fun with it and reach out. I chirped:
Hi @BWilliams! Welcome to @Twitter! Looking forward to following you. （Don’t worry, I’m not a stalker） Your pal, Katie.
Pretty harmless, right? But CBS PR called a state of emergency. “What were you thinking?” they screeched at Erica Anderson, the young woman who helped with my social media. “Katie’s ratings are lower than Brian’s. It’s never a good idea to engage with him!”
“They don’t have a clue,” Erica told me, rolling her eyes.
When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, belching oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I reported from the scene, then solicited questions on Twitter from viewers distressed about the environmental disaster unfolding in real time, including endless images of distraught birds coated in what looked like chocolate syrup. The team fanned out, finding answers, which I then shared on the broadcast.
Paul Friedman later sniffed to one of my producers, “I think it’s beneath the anchor of the CBS Evening News to be on the Twitter.”
Yes, the Twitter.
ACROSS THE STREET, things with Fager were starting to curdle. Perhaps he felt that the bad press I was getting would tarnish his show’s sterling reputation. Perhaps it bothered him that I didn’t need a Svengali. Perhaps I didn’t suck up enough. Perhaps he was just an ass who didn’t like strong women. （So many choices!）
Whatever it was, our relationship went from bad to worse. Two incidents stand out. In the fall of 2008, the catchy song “Poker Face” blanketed the airwaves, bringing a new level of attention to a fledgling pop singer. I called Vicki Gordon, a senior producer who’d shepherded countless big interviews during her tenure, and said, “Listen, I have an idea. Lady Gaga’s going to be huge—the next Madonna. I think she’d make a great profile.”
Pop stars in general weren’t a slam dunk with the gray-faced newshounds of 60 Minutes, but when someone rose to the level of phenomenon, whatever the field, I thought it was important to take notice.
Vicki said she thought it was an interesting idea and that she’d run it by Fager.
She called me back the next day: “Jeff said, ‘Not for us.’”
I was disappointed but not surprised. I gave a mental shrug and turned back to my work.
A year later, Vicki called me at the Evening News. “Remember your idea about Lady Gaga? Well, now Jeff wants to do it.”
“Great!” I said, feeling vindicated. But by that point she’d been virtually everywhere, including the cover of Rolling Stone. “We can try a different angle,” I told Vicki. “She went to a Catholic girls’ school near my apartment. We could go back and talk to her teachers.”
A few days later, I walked across the street to check in at the production office, where they kept a big whiteboard listing upcoming stories and the correspondents who were doing them. I saw Lady Gaga on the board and scanned to the right. Under correspondent, it said Anderson Cooper.
What?
Back at my office I called Vicki. “I don’t understand,” I said. “I came up with that story a year ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “They decided to give it to Anderson.”
“Why? That was my story!”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
The unfairness made me insane. I’m not sure why I didn’t just storm into Fager’s office and get it all out on the table. But I let it go.
The second bile-inducing incident came right after the 2008 election when Obama, in a true team-of-rivals move, chose Hillary for secretary of state. Fager told me, “I want you to do the definitive profile of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.” I had already interviewed her on the campaign trail for 60 Minutes, so it made sense.
Lori Beecher began laying the groundwork. She reached out to Philippe Reines, Hillary’s senior adviser at the State Department, to start figuring out the logistics.
Two weeks later, Lori walked into my office looking confused. “Philippe just called me,” she said. “He told me that Scott Pelley’s team had reached out about a profile of Hillary for 60. He asked if we even talk to each other over here.”
This time I confronted Fager. “Jeff, I don’t understand,” I said, standing in his office, with its crappy feng shui—for some reason, there was no seating close enough to his desk to enable a serious conversation. “You told me that you wanted me to do the profile of Hillary Clinton, but Scott Pelley’s producers are calling, and it makes everyone look stupid.”