Book: Katie Couric 'Brash, Striving, Self-Absorbed'

A new book by a veteran journalist reportedly paints Katie Couric as a “self-absorbed” personality who denigrated and demeaned one of her top female competitors.

In Sheila Weller’s The News Sorority, a book that details the rise of Diane Sawyer, Couric, and Christiane Amanpour, “Couric comes off as brash, striving, self-absorbed” and petty, according to The Daily Beast. 

For instance, When Sawyer beat Couric “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 also reportedly depicts Couric as someone who was sometimes “insensitive to the realities faced by her less well-compensated coworkers,” even though she has had to overcome the death of her husband to cancer. According to the Beast, Couric was slammed for doing a glamorous photo shoot with Harper’s Bazarre in 2010, when CBS News was slashing jobs. Weller reportedly writes that it felt like Couric, who was making $15 million a year, “was rubbing in her privilege while so many women saw themselves, or their friends, cleaning their desks and saying goodbye.”

Weller reportedly “spoke extensively to friends and associates of the trio, with the principals’ permission, but not directly to Couric, Sawyer, or Amanpour,” according to the Beast.

After leaving CBS, Couric hosted a daytime talk show, which was panned as an “unmitigated disaster” before getting canceled. She is now at Yahoo after taking a substantial pay cut.