Producer (14 page)

I cringed when I heard my own words resound. It was pretty obvious that when it came to Mother Teresa, “gangbang” was not
the right thing to say. I still had a lot to learn. But how would I learn it when there was no one around to mentor me?

Although there was a lack of an official mentor in my life, there were some great characters in the newsroom who had been
around the block, and I learned what I could from them.
I think most everyone would agree that no one was more interesting, knowledgeable, and eccentric than Susan Zirinsky, who
is currently executive producer of
48 Hours
on CBS. She had such a powerful reputation and was such a colorful character, the blockbuster movie
Broadcast News
starring Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks was based on this woman whom we all called Z. I learned a great deal
from her, like making sure my reporters had three newspapers waiting for them in the mornings and getting the typed-up notes
to them that explained where we were going that day and the various phone numbers they would need.

I learned it all from Z, and she and I were quite competitive, mainly because we were cut from the same cloth. That meant
that above all else, we both wanted to get “the story.” She was already a big deal when I arrived at the White House, and
I looked to her experience and her willingness to help, despite her edge of competitiveness. She had one up on me because
when I was growing up, I had never engaged in sports in order to learn the art of healthy competition.

Z once said to me, “Wendy, if you want longevity in this business, you have to learn to cry.” That comment sparked a famous
scene in
Broadcast News
where Holly Hunter’s character came in early to take a few minutes to sob loudly at her desk before the business of the day
took over. I appreciated Z’s sentiment, but I already knew how to cry. I just had to make sure I did it at the right time
and in the right place so I didn’t look like a wimp.

The thing is, we all have our own styles and Z’s style was exciting and explosive, perfect fodder for a Hollywood movie. When
they were doing research for the film, costar and writer Albert Brooks asked me if he could come to a presidential event.
He showed up in Santa Barbara to hear the president
speak and the director of the film, James L. Brooks, asked me if he could come to my Washington apartment to see how a producer
lived. I invited him to see my Georgetown apartment, which was in a mansion that was now divided into four separate homes.
Mine included the front door, half of a living room, and a tiny bedroom. He walked around, asked me a ton of questions, and
took notes, and I have to say, I loved the movie. I was honored that the director even wanted to see my apartment. And it
was great to see a movie based on Z.

I still had so much more to learn when bureau chief George Watson called me into his office in 1980 to tell me he was leaving
ABC to be bureau chief at Cable News Network, Ted Turner’s baby, and he wanted me to come with him. “Picking Bernie Shaw as
the main anchor is easy,” he said, “but I don’t know the secretaries or the assistants here. I’d like you to be my assistant,
and I need you to tell me whom we should hire from ABC. By the way, I know you want to be a producer, and at Cable News Network
you can learn that by being hands-on, as opposed to staying here at ABC and watching everybody else do it. You’d eventually
become a producer here at ABC, but it would take a lot longer.”

I was a little taken aback since I had no idea what this new position would require. Did I have the experience and wisdom
to help George make the right choices? I didn’t know, but George’s argument was convincing enough for me to seriously consider
the offer. I checked with several of my coworkers at ABC who all encouraged me to go for it. I turned to my friend, reporter
and anchor Sam Donaldson, to get his opinion because George had approached him to come over to Ted’s new network. He declined
the offer, which made sense, since ABC was treating him much too well for him to leave and join an upstart fledgling network.
Still, Sam assured me that the
door would remain open for me at ABC and I could come back after I’d gotten some producing experience.

After serious consideration, I went back to George and told him I was on board. “My roommate, Katie Couric,” I said, “wants
to be a writer. I think she’ll come over with us. And I like Scott Willis, a really talented producer. He’s a director at
ABC and I think he’d be a great guy for us.” I still recall my reluctance to leave ABC at that time, which was even tougher
when I learned that Carl Bernstein, a reporter in his thirties, was taking over for George Watson as bureau chief.

The names Woodward and Bernstein were huge at the time (they still are), ever since the Watergate break-in and the revelation
of the surreptitious whistle-blower whom these two reporters called Deep Throat. Little did I know at the time that more than
twenty-five years later, I would be in charge of the very show that would get the only interview with the real Deep Throat,
a man named Mark Felt.

Here is an excerpt from that rare interview that happened shortly before he died, on April 26, 2009:

KING:
Were you surprised that it was a secret for so long?

FELT:
Yes, I guess I was.

KING:
Did you like being called Deep Throat?

FELT:
Well, yes. In some ways, I do. I’m proud of everything Deep Throat did. Yes, I like being related to him.

KING:
So you have no questions of yourself as to why you did it?

FELT:
No. No.

KING:
Because there were some who said that you were kind of like a traitor to the cause. There were a few—certainly on the Republican
right side, who complained that you were turning the tide on your boss.

FELT:
That sounds like the Republican approach.

KING:
Why did you do it?

FELT:
I don’t remember doing that. I mean, I tried to go along with whatever I thought was correct and 100 percent accurate, but
if that happened to bring somebody in on the side, that was just the effects of the facts.

KING:
Why did you decide to help Woodward? Why did you decide to do what you did?

FELT:
Because he was doing a good job.

KING:
No other reason?

FELT:
No other reasons.

KING:
Did you always trust Bob Woodward?

FELT:
Pretty much so, yes. Pretty much.

KING:
You never feared that he would reveal your name at a time that might have been…

FELT:
I didn’t have that fear, no.

KING:
Why did you come out?

FELT:
Well, because with politics moving the way they did, I had no choice, really, but to come out and put everything on the line,
both plus and minus on the line.

KING:
Do you think you upset Mr. Woodward?

FELT:
Well, maybe a little. A little, but I think he understood. When it was all laid out on the table in front of him, he understood.

KING:
Because he always said, you know, they’d never reveal it until Deep Throat passed away. And obviously, you didn’t pass away.

FELT:
No. I hope I haven’t.

As part of that interview, Larry spoke with both Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein:

BERNSTEIN:
I certainly salute him [Mark Felt]… I think that he did a great thing under difficult circumstances and I wish at a time of
another aberrant presidency we had more people with his values, as he expressed them during Watergate, today.

WOODWARD:
There are a lot of people in the FBI who were critical of Mark Felt, and I think I’d just like to take a moment and talk to
them because I’ve heard from a number of them. Go to the seat that Mark Felt had at the moment of Watergate. Hoover just died.
Nixon was putting tremendous political pressure on the bureau. There was evidence of concealment and cover-up and criminality,
all of the tentacles of Watergate.

Felt saw those, the attorney general, former attorney general, the White House counsel, as we now know the president himself,
all the key people in the White House, quite frankly, were involved in a criminal conspiracy. What do you do? Do you sit there
on your ass and do nothing? A lot of people would say, well, yes, those are the rules. Well, sometimes you have to break the
rules and this is somebody who was willing to step over the line and I think, given his training and position in the bureau
and being there so many years, probably one of the hardest things a human being ever did, but he did it.

Everybody wanted to be in close proximity to these legends who were famous for keeping a secret while they broke open the
Watergate scandal. But when Carl Bernstein also encouraged me to go to Ted Turner and said I could come back when I wanted
to, the debate was over. Still, it was a very sad day when I walked out of ABC carrying my little brown box filled with the
things from my desk, climbed into my Chevy Chevette, and drove away.

I knew very little about Ted Turner, the person, although he had definitely made his mark in business. A highly competitive
and controversial figure, Ted was a unique entrepreneur who helped change the way the world interacts with the media, particularly
the news. Both hated and loved for his flamboyant style, Ted (notorious for, among other things, marrying actress Jane Fonda,
which ended in a high profile divorce) was a Southern businessman with a penchant for taking risks that helped him establish
a corporate empire with holdings in every area of the entertainment industry.

An accomplished sailor, Ted took part in sailing competitions from the time he was eleven years old at the Savannah Yacht
Club in Georgia. He so excelled in this field, he competed in the Olympic trials in 1964 and successfully defended the America’s
Cup for the United States as skipper of the yacht
Courageous.
In the 1979 Fastnet race, in a deadly storm that killed several participants, he skippered his craft
Tenacious
to victory.

Sailing, however, was not the only arena in which Ted Turner competed and won. In 1970, he purchased an Atlanta UHF television
station which, along with CNN, became the Turner Broadcasting System (WTBS). No one knows what he foresaw when he dreamed
up Cable News Network and started implementing it. But he must have had an inkling of its extraordinary potential for success,
or why else would he have risked so much time and so much of his own money?

It was an uphill battle to get the network launched and make it relevant. Today, however, CNN has revolutionized the news
media, arguably making its name in January 28, 1986, when we were the only network to have live coverage of the launch of
the space shuttle
Challenger
, which exploded just seventy-three seconds after liftoff. Seven astronauts, including
schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, were killed in the disaster and CNN became a household word. Since I had interviewed Christa
McAuliffe on the White House lawn when she visited President Reagan, I felt the loss personally as well as collectively.

President Reagan consoled the nation from the Oval Office with heartrending words written by his speechwriter Peggy Noonan,
who borrowed an image from John Gillespie Magee’s poem “High Flight” to describe the disaster: “We will never forget them
[the crew], nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye, and
slipped the surly bonds of earth, to touch the face of God.
”

Some years later, CNN’s coverage of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 clinched our standing as the essential news network. Today,
everyone knows about CNN, both in and out of the United States. Our kids have grown up with it, and like computers and cell
phones, they can’t imagine life without twenty-four-hour news channels, whether or not they watch them. Before we were known
worldwide, however, all we could do was scurry around to find employees for this revolutionary undertaking. Katie joined us
as an assignment editor and Bernie Shaw, a highly respected reporter who was in Iraq during the hostage crisis, came on board
as anchor.

March 11, 1980, was my first day with Cable News Network, which was about three months before its launch. Without a clear
job description and no one to tell me what to do, I bought myself a Rolodex and began to gather names and numbers. I really
didn’t know how to begin, and there was no one to ask. So my first order of business, I decided, was to cold-call the Washington
agencies and various news organizations, telling them that Cable News Network existed and we were entitled to receive their
press releases. I also contacted Capitol Hill and
the National Art Gallery, asking them to send us their press releases, too, like they would any other news organization. No
matter that we were being ridiculed and called the McNetwork and a lot of other names such as Chicken Noodle News.

Our first Washington newsroom was on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, and our employees had all come from some kind of news
experience. Local news people and veterans from ABC arrived at Cable News Network with their unique set of skills and did
whatever they could. In the meantime, a ton of résumés were pouring in along with audition tapes from reporters. I viewed
them all and used my gut to make decisions. I often found myself in the position of having to trust my intuition since I had
no solid idea of what I should do and no one who came before me to show me the ropes. I simply had to mentor myself, so that
was exactly what I did.

I thought about what ABC used to do as I gathered some good people together for George, and he generally listened to me as
to whom we should hire, like a young man named Sandy Kenyon, who eventually became Bernie Shaw’s producer. There was a fair
amount of naïveté at the time among our fledgling staff as we grabbed local news anchors who were big deals and various other
reporters from here or there. We simply had to move forward as if our network was a done deal, but it was mostly trial and
error. We ended up with some really inefficient people, some really good people, some terrible reporters who didn’t belong
on the air, and some solid ones who were sophisticated and deserved to be on the air. I chalked it all up to growing pains,
and we tried to stay positive as we raced against the clock to launch Ted Turner’s dream. Now it had become our dream, too.