WALTER CRONKITE CALLING out Jerry Falwell wasn’t the first time he tipped his ideological hand. When he shed a tear and took off his glasses while announcing that JFK had died, when he said from the anchor desk, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate” （prompting LBJ to say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America”）， he was weighing in. Who knows how much more damage Senator Joseph McCarthy would have done during his Communist witch hunt if Edward R. Murrow hadn’t sounded the alarm about his smear tactics?
Not that I’m comparing myself to Cronkite and Murrow. I just appreciate that even those pinnacles of the profession knew it was okay to let the objectivity mask slip from time to time. It can be damn hard to keep in place—like, say, when someone claims that same-sex marriage is a threat to our society. To me, that’s not only woefully wrongheaded; it’s dangerous, and I don’t think it should go unchallenged. There comes a time when objectivity has to yield to standing up for what’s right.
I reconnected with Matthew Shepard’s parents several times over the long arc of his story, forever entwined with the culture’s evolving feelings about what it is to be gay in America. Judy and Dennis have played an important role in that evolution. I so admire their continual willingness to share their son’s unthinkable fate as a way of educating people.
I saw them again in 2018 at a memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, where Matthew’s remains—in a small square vessel draped in ivory damask, embossed with a red iron cross—were interred; the Shepards had always been reluctant to bury their son for fear that his gravesite would be desecrated. Now, in a safe and reverential place, Matthew, that heartbreaking symbol of the human cost of bigotry, was laid to rest. And if seeing him that way makes me biased, so be it.
46
The Booking Wars
JANUARY 1999. PRESIDENT Clinton’s impeachment trial was underway, The Sopranos debuted, and ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota. But the story that really got my attention: Diane Sawyer was moving to the morning.
Diane was everything I wasn’t—tall, blond, with a creamy complexion; a former Junior Miss Kentucky. Like Daisy Buchanan’s, her voice was “full of money,” seductive and dramatic. And her resumé was top-drawer: a Wellesley graduate, a member of the Nixon White House （she’d later help the former president write his memoirs）， the first female correspondent on 60 Minutes, co-anchor of several news shows, including Primetime Live. I was a widow; Diane was in a high-wattage marriage with revered director/producer Mike Nichols. I was fun and feisty; Diane was sleek and sophisticated. But there were a few notable similarities: we were both at the top of our games, and we were both very competitive.
When Diane became a star, I was still a local reporter, covering fires and school-board meetings. I remember being both fascinated and envious watching her report from the State Department. I scrutinized her on 60 Minutes as she conducted a rare TV interview with legendary four-star admiral Hyman G. Rickover, then a cantankerous 84. I couldn’t get over how cool that was.
When I was working at WTVJ in Miami, she came and spoke at a luncheon at a downtown hotel. Afterward, she took questions from the audience. I can still feel my heart hammering in my chest as I approached the mic. I can’t remember what I asked her, but I do remember thinking she glowed.
And now we’d be going head to head.
I liked Diane and I think she liked me, so it was sort of funny to be cast in the press as mortal enemies. But we definitely kept tabs on each other. It got back to me that on the set of Good Morning America, she always had an eye on the monitor tuned to our show. Apparently one day while watching me, she said to no one in particular, “That woman must be stopped.”
A TODAY show producer gave me a pillow she’d had printed with the quote, signed D.S.
I loved that I was getting under Diane’s skin. Not that she wasn’t getting under mine. When she scored a huge interview with a woman who’d just given birth to twins at the age of 57, I said, “I wonder who she had to blow to get that.”
A wisecrack, people! But when it turned up in the tabloids, it didn’t exactly sound that way.
I’m pretty sure I speak for Diane when I say neither of us ever resorted to actual fellatio to land an interview, but we both engaged in the metaphoric kind—flattering gatekeepers, family members, and whoever else stood in the way of a big get.
Even before she was crowned the queen of GMA, Diane and I had been competing for years. And it wasn’t just us. There was Jane Pauley, who co-hosted Dateline; Jane was so decent, she found the competition for bookings to be distasteful and played the game reluctantly. Doggedly competitive Connie Chung was in the mix, hosting Eye to Eye with Connie Chung when she wasn’t co-anchoring the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.