Born in Glasgow, Kentucky, Diane Sawyer is the daughter of Jean W. Sawyer — an elementary school teacher — and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a judge.
Years later, Sawyer would be suspected to be Deep Throat, the source of leaks of classified information to journalist Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal. In 2005 Deep Throat was identified as W. Mark Felt, but prior to that, Rabbi Baruch Korff — a longtime Nixon confidant and defender known as "Nixon's rabbi" — said on his deathbed that he believed Sawyer was Deep Throat. Sawyer laughed it off, and she was one of six people to request and receive a public denial from Woodward.
In 1978, Sawyer joined
CBS News as a political correspondent and became a co-anchor, with Bill Kurtis, of the
CBS Morning News in 1981. In 1984, she became a correspondent for
60 Minutes, a
CBS News investigative television newsmagazine; she remained for five years.
In 1989, she moved to
ABC News to co-anchor newsmagazine
Primetime Live, with Sam Donaldson. From 1998 to 2000, she would become a co-anchor for ABC's
20/20, also a newsmagazine, co-anchoring on Wednesdays with Donaldson and on Sundays with Barbara Walters.
In 1999, Sawyer returned to morning news (GMA), under a lucrative contract, as the co-anchor of
GMA with Charles Gibson. The assignment was putatively temporary, but her success in the position, measured by a close in the gap with front-runner
Today,
NBC News's morning program, sustained her in the position far longer than anticipated.
On September 2, 2009, she was announced as the successor to Gibson, who retired as
ABC World News anchor on Friday, December 18, 2009. She left
GMA on December 11, 2009, and was scheduled to become the
ABC World News anchor in January 2010. However, on December 1, 2009,
The New York Times reported that instead of moving to
ABC World News in January 2010, Sawyer will start on December 21, 2009, three days after Gibson's departure . Along with Katie Couric of
CBS News, two of the three network news anchors on broadcast television will be women. Ratings jumped 8% after her first four weeks, averaging 8.8 million viewers. She signs off at the end of her nightly broadcast with "I'll see you right back here tomorrow night."
Career timeline
- 1967-1970: WLKY-TV news reporter and weather girl
- 1970-1974: White House press aide
- 1974-1978: Literary assistant to former President Richard Nixon
- 1981-1984: CBS Morning News anchor
- 1984-1989: 60 Minutes correspondentStaff writer (undated). "Diane Sawyer". Internet Movie Database. Accessed December 12, 2009.
- 1989-1998, since 2000: Primetime Live co-anchor
- 1998-2000: 20/20 co-anchor
- January 1999 - December 11, 2009: Good Morning America co-anchor (Then Anchor when Charles Gibson left to ABC World News)
- December 21, 2009—Present: ABC World News anchor
Career Recognition
In 2001 she was named one of the thirty most-powerful women in America by the
Ladies' Home Journal. In 2007 she ranked 62nd on "
Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women". She has won multiple awards, including a 2009 Peabody Award for her work on
A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains.
Notable interviews (selected)
Sawyer has interviewed many political figures including U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. She conducted the first interview with U.S. President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after his first election to the presidency in 1992.
On February 12, 2007, she interviewed Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her interview with President of Iraq Saddam Hussein was his first Western television interview in a decade.
She has also interviewed:
- Fidel Castro, President of Cuba
- Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense
- Manuel Noriega, general and the military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989
- Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
- Richard Nixon, President of the United States
- Nancy Reagan, First Lady
- Hyman G. Rickover, U.S. Admiral
- Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice
She was allowed to take a special tour of North Korea.
From the entertainment world, Sawyer has interviewed ... especially as a host of
GMA:
- Clay Aiken, singer (interviewed twice)
- Bobby Brown, singer
- Ellen DeGeneres, comedian
- Dixie Chicks, country-music group
- Michael J. Fox, actor
- Mel Gibson, actor
- Whitney Houston, singer
- Winona Ryder, actress
- Michael Jackson, singer
- Madonna, singer
- Roman Polanski, film director
- Lisa Marie Presley, singer-songwriter
- Rihanna, singer
- Britney Spears, singer
- Brian Wilson, musician (The Beach Boys)
- Meryl Streep, actress
Sawyer also interviewed drug kingpin Rayful Edmond III of Washington, D.C., in 1989 and once again in 1997 on
60 Minutes.
