New book by Sheila Weller promises to shed some light on “The News Sorority”

Aug 28, 2014 09:48 GMT  ·  By

Rivalries between the anchors or hosts of top-rated TV shows are not uncommon, even if there’s never enough documentation in the press about them. Sheila Weller promises to deliver plenty of that in her new book “The News Sorority,” in which she details the never-ending feud between Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric and Christiane Amanopour.

Diane and Katie were particularly vicious towards each other at one point, back in the day when Diane was on Good Morning America and Katie was on The Today Show, and each was doing brilliantly at her job.

The Daily Beast obtained several excerpts from the book, which is yet to come out in stores (the release date is set for September 30), and one of them details an incident that occurred when Diane beat Katie to an exclusive. By then, there was already bad blood between them, a lot of it – enough of it so that neither cared who else in the industry knew it.

“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,’” Weller writes.

Diane was just as mean, the veteran reporter claims in her book. “When a friend of Diane’s, a public figure, was being pursued by Katie’s people, the wooed eminence got a call from [Diane’s husband, the famed director] Mike Nichols, who said – in a very nice way, to be sure – that he and Diane would essentially cut off all social contact if their friend appeared on Today,” Weller says.

Reps for Sawyer and Couric have already released statements to say that very little, if anything, of what Weller put in the book is accurate, but that can’t stop these excerpts from going viral.

Factual or not, the book will be a best seller, without a doubt, and not just because people are this strongly drawn to scandal. “The News Sorority” promises to offer an insight into a world to which we have no access otherwise, and at the same time, to offer some context for the impressive careers of the 3 most famous news women.

Or, as the Best puts it, “Katie Couric comes across as brash, striving, and self-absorbed, Diane Sawyer is a Machiavellian, often-inscrutable workaholic, and Christiane Amanpour has an off-putting moral superiority.”

Diane Sawyer most probably never gave certain favors in exchange for interviews, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone believed that and told Weller so she put it in her book. Clearly, the publishers are convinced that this rumor would sell the book, so they made sure to release this particular excerpt to the press.