Katie Couric calls out former ’60 Minutes’ boss, says she was ‘gaslit’

Katie Couric opened up about her stories being reassigned to male colleagues during her time at “60 Minutes” between 2006 and 2011.

Katie Couric is ready to talk about “the really tough situations” she dealt with as a correspondent for “60 Minutes” more than two decades ago.

The 69-year-old journalist and founder of Katie Couric Media shared her experiences of having her stories assigned to male reporters during an episode of “Call Her Daddy,” which was released June 24.

The head of “60 Minutes,” executive producer Jeff Fager, “just didn’t like me,” Couric told host Alex Cooper. She speculated that “he wasn’t really consulted about bringing me over” and thought she was “muddying the waters” by “seeing somebody from a different network.”

During her time contributing to the newsmagazine, which coincided with her anchoring duties as “CBS Evening News” from 2006 to 2011, Couric pitched a profile of an up-and-coming Lady Gaga, predicting she would become “the next Madonna.” Fager initially passed on the idea, then a year later expressed interest in spotlighting the popstar.

Couric said her new proposed angle about Gaga’s Catholic school education was accepted. But when she went to the studio, she found she wouldn’t be doing the feature, after all.

“They had a whiteboard at CBS, and they had the name of the correspondent and the story next to it. And I see: Lady Gaga, Anderson Cooper,” Couric said. Cooper’s interview with then 25-year-old Gaga aired in February 2011.

“It made me crazy,” Couric confessed. “But that happened again with Hillary Clinton.”

A representative for Fager could not be reached at the time of publication.

Katie Couric’s Hillary Clinton interview was reassigned to Scott Pelley

Though Fager allegedly asked her to sit down with former Secretary of State Clinton, Couric soon learned the State Department was getting mixed messages on who was leading the charge on the “60 Minutes” interview.

“Suddenly, my producer’s saying, ‘The State Department called. They’re very confused because Scott Pelley and his team were calling about Hillary,” Couric recalled. “So I go to Jeff Fager and I say, ‘I thought you wanted me to do Hillary. You told me explicitly that you wanted to assign that story to me.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, we decided to change things up.'”

“It made me insane,” she admitted. Pelley’s segment with Clinton aired in May 2010.

She took issue with such decisions happening “behind my back” and called out Fager for lacking “the decency to call me and say, ‘Guess what? We decided to reassign the story, and this is why.”

“Talk about getting gaslit,” Couric added.

CBS News’ past controversies, from sexism to firings

Fager executive-produced “60 Minutes” from 2004 until 2018, a tenure that overlapped with his role as chairman of CBS News, which started in 2011.

He was fired in 2018 for a threatening message he’d sent to a CBS reporter who covered internal misconduct allegations, communication he’d described as a “harsh” demand “for fairness.” At the time, Fager was also facing accusations of inappropriate behavior and covering up others’ sexual misconduct. He denied the claims.

Before Couric, fellow “60 Minutes” correspondent Meredith Vieira also alleged she’d experienced sexism while employed by CBS.

As of this year, neither Pelley nor Cooper is reporting for “60 Minutes.” Pelley became embroiled in an upheaval at “60 Minutes” when he was fired on June 2 for criticizing CBS News leadership. He was axed after a heated staff meeting in which he’d accused CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” the news institution and rebuking newly minted executive producer Nick Bilton for his “slender” TV news qualifications.

Aside from Pelley and Simon, a slew of other “60 Minutes” staffers have been let go, including executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. In May, Cooper signed off on the news program for the final time after two decades on the show, citing a desire to spend more time with his family.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Katie Couric says she was pushed out of ’60 Minutes’ interviews