Lila Diane Sawyer (born December 22, 1945) is an American
television journalist for the
ABC News division of the
ABC network and a
co-anchor of its morning news program,
Good Morning America. 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 the
Forbes "
The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" list. On September 2, 2009,
ABC News announced that Sawyer will become the anchor of
ABC World News after
Charles Gibson steps down from the broadcast in January 2010.
Biography
Sawyer was born in
Glasgow,
Kentucky, the daughter of Jean W. (
née Dunagan), an elementary school teacher, and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a judge. Soon after her birth, her family moved to
Louisville, Kentucky, where her father rose to local prominence as a
Republican politician and community leader; he was the
Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisville's
Interstate 64 in 1969.
E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, located in the
Frey's Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor.
Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the
Buechel area of Louisville. In 1963, she won the "
America's Junior Miss" scholarship pageant as a representative from the State of Kentucky, and in 1967, she received a degree in English from
Wellesley College in
Wellesley,
Massachusetts.
She attended one semester of law school at the
University of Louisville before turning to journalism.
On April 29, 1988, she and
Mike Nichols, a
film director, were married; they have no children. Nichols has Daisy (born 1974), Max (born 1964), and Jenny (born 1977) from his three previous marriages. Sawyer had previously had relationships with
Frank Gannon, aide to President
Richard Nixon, and U.S. diplomat
Richard Holbrooke.
Career
Sawyer served as a local TV news reporter and weather girl for
WLKY-TV in
Louisville, Kentucky. In 1970, White House press secretary
Ron Ziegler hired her to serve in the administration of President Nixon. Sawyer stayed on through his resignation in 1974 and worked on the Nixon-
Ford transition team in 1974–75, after which she decamped with Nixon to California and helped him write his memoirs, published in 1978. She also helped prepare Nixon for his
famous set of television interviews with journalist
David Frost in 1977. Years later, Sawyer would be suspected to be
Deep Throat, the source of leaks of classified information to
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 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, where she remained for five years.
In 1989, she moved to
ABC to co-anchor
Primetime Live with
Sam Donaldson. From 1998 to 2000, she would become a co-anchor for ABC's
20/20, co-anchoring on Wednesdays with Donaldson and on Sundays with
Barbara Walters.
In 1999, Sawyer returned to morning news, under a lucrative contract, as the co-anchor of
Good Morning America, with
Charles Gibson. The assignment was putatively temporary, but her success in the position, measured by a close in the gap with front-runner
The Today Show on
NBC, has kept her in the position far longer than anticipated.
On September 2, 2009, she was announced as the replacement for Charles Gibson, who is retiring as ABC's World News anchor. She will become the anchor in January 2010 and will be leaving
Good Morning America. Along with Katie Couric, this means two of the three leading anchors will be women.
Career timeline
- 1998–2000: 20/20 co-anchor
Famous interviews
Sawyer has interviewed many important political figures, such as U.S. President
Barack Obama; former U.S. President
George W. Bush; former U.S. President and First Lady
Bill and
Hillary Clinton— first interview after the former's 1992 election to the U.S. Presidency;
Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad— February 12, 2007; one of the first interviews granted to an American, former Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein; Rep.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), First Female Speaker of the House; Supreme Court justice
Antonin Scalia; former Cuban President
Fidel Castro; former U.S. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara; former First Lady
Nancy Reagan; U.S. Admiral
Hyman G. Rickover; and former Panamanian General
Manuel Noriega. She was allowed to take a special tour of North Korea.
From the entertainment world, Sawyer has interviewed singers
Whitney Houston,
Bobby Brown,
Lisa Marie Presley, and
Michael Jackson; actor
Michael J. Fox, comedienne
Ellen DeGeneres (after her coming-out), the
Dixie Chicks,
Madonna,
Britney Spears,
Clay Aiken (twice), and actor
Mel Gibson.
Diane Sawyer also interviewed drug king pin Rayful Edmond III of Washington D.C. once in 1989 and once in 1997 on
Sixty Minutes.
