Did Katie Couric Accuse Diane Sawyer of Handing Out BJs Like Candy?

Sheila Weller's dishy new tell-all book The News Sorority: Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour—and the (Ongoing, Imperfect, Complicated) Triumph of Women in TV News won't hit shelves for a full month, but its best anecdote just exploded onto the web like 5-7 ml of semen into the mouth of Diane Sawyer, allegedly ushered there by her own enthusiastic efforts, at least according to Katie Couric (also allegedly).

The Daily Beast has published a selection of highlights from the upcoming behind-the-scenes book, including revelations such as Katie Couric and Walter Cronkite got dinner and Christiane Amanpour was angry she got a show on CNN International instead of CNN Regular CNN That Everyone Loves.

Then there was this:

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."

For the sake of a Wednesday afternoon, let's transport ourselves to a hypothetical world in which this story is true. At first glance it looks a lot like our own world, except that if you look closely, the colors on the traffic lights are reversed. Here are questions to consider:

  1. Whom did Diane Sawyer blow the first (or all previous) time(s)?
  2. To what end or ends?
  3. Whom could Diane Sawyer have blown this time that would have gotten her priority access to the 57-year-old mother of twins? The twins' father? The super of the Hell's Kitchen apartment where the woman lives with her family? The doorman? Anderson Cooper with the lights on, for the thrill of it?
  4. Would Katie Couric have blown the person in question if the idea had occurred to her first, or nah?

Daily Beast editor-at-large Lloyd Grove wrote that "Sources at ABC News, speaking on behalf of Sawyer, sought to dismiss the book's portrayal as overwrought and occasionally wrongheaded." Representatives for Couric and Amanpour declined to comment about the book on the record to the Beast.

[The Daily Beast // Image via Getty]