By Menachem Wecker
Marvin Kalb couldn’t remember the exact day – he guessed it was 35 or 40 years ago – that a “very bright young woman” walked into the CBS newsroom in Washington.
“Everyone looked up and realized instinctively that someone special had just entered, someone likely to be on a very fast track,” Mr. Kalb, host of The Kalb Report, said of his guest, Diane Sawyer, at the National Press Club on March 22.
The show, which was part of a conference of the International Women’s Media Foundation, featured nearly an hour of questions and answers with Ms. Sawyer, anchor of ABC World News.
Ms. Sawyer spoke about her early days as a weather reporter, the increasing prominence of social media in journalism, her collaboration with President Richard Nixon on his memoirs and the challenges of being the first woman reporter and anchor on 60 Minutes.
She said she knew she was in trouble when the entire group of 60 Minutes correspondents ended a meeting in the men’s room, saying before entering the restroom, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“I’m standing outside thinking, ‘Well, it must be very useful to know what it is they’re going to do next,’” she said.
In response to a question from the audience, Ms. Sawyer called herself a “bad weather girl.”
“I didn’t have contact lenses and didn’t even bother with the West Coast half the night, because I couldn’t even see the West Coast,” she said. “It just seemed so unimportant to me. ‘Go look it up yourself.’”
The program got heated when Mr. Kalb turned to President Nixon. “Please help me understand your continuing loyalty to a president who had embarrassed the country, had lied to the American people and gave birth to the Watergate scandal,” he said.
Ms. Sawyer served in the Nixon administration and later helped the then-former president write his memoirs.
Ms. Sawyer said her father had taught her that if she walked away from someone at the worst point in her or his life, “that is also a choice that has implications for who you are and who you want to be.”
“I saw what was done. I saw it on the inside, and we all know what a ghastly bruise that was,” she said. “But I was one person asked by one other person in the worst moment for them, and I don’t know – I just wouldn’t have known how to say no.” She also said she believes people can redeem themselves.
Though Mr. Kalb asked tough questions, Ms. Sawyer managed to turn the tables on him when he brought up Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
“Is Assange a journalist?” Mr. Kalb asked. “Is he like Diane Sawyer and entitled to all of the privileges of a journalist?”
“Does someone have to be a certified journalist before you will accept the information they bring you?” Ms. Sawyer wondered.
“But wait a minute, I'm interviewing you,” Mr. Kalb said, laughing. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’ll tell you what, let’s go to another subject.”
Ms. Sawyer also spoke at length about the ways social media is changing journalism.
“We’re on Twitter. We are at World News. I am not on Twitter, but I am on Facebook,” she said. “And I think it’s the most exciting vitality during the day to see … all the different conversations going on at once.”
Mr. Kalb asked if Ms. Sawyer sees the Internet as competition for ABC. She said she does not.
“We have to be out there creating a unique and important conversation answering questions in a unique and important way so that you also want to come to us,” she said.
Other issues Mr. Kalb raised included the reliability of social media content like YouTube clips (Ms. Sawyer said ABC vets that footage carefully), ABC’s budget (Ms. Sawyer never asks how much a broadcast costs, and doesn’t want to know) and ratings (“I don’t check them,” Ms. Sawyer said).
“I do not know a single time in my entire career when I could not cover the story I wanted or a broadcast I was on could not cover the story they wanted because of money,” she said. “Never have heard it said, ‘We can’t afford to cover that story,’ ever.”
Michael Freedman, executive producer of the Kalb Report, said the interview with Diane Sawyer attracted the show’s largest live audience ever.
“Diane Sawyer lights up a room when she enters, draws people like a magnet and then somehow succeeds in convincing you that she is lucky to be in your company! Combine all of that with her superb journalistic skills and groundbreaking resume, and you begin to understand why she drew the biggest crowd in the history of the Kalb Report series.”
Mr. Freedman, executive director of the Global Media Institute, said he found it “mesmerizing” to watch the audience watching Ms. Sawyer, and it reminded him of the line from the film Jerry McGuire, “You had me at ‘Hello.’”
The evening was particularly remarkable, Mr. Freedman said, because dozens of delegates from around the world, who are participating in the International Conference of Women Media Leaders at the university this week, were in attendance.
“What stood out, in part, in this forum was the contrast between the genuine star power of the very gifted and talented Diane Sawyer and the plight of courageous seekers of truth in countries where reporters are often considered criminals,” he said. “A stunning convergence!”
The Kalb Report series is produced by the GW Global Media Institute, The National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.