Ira Rosen — YouTube
Katie Couric is “lazy,” Diane Sawyer is “two faced” and Mike Wallace would steal stories, claims former CBS news producer Ira Rosen. He makes these claims in a new memoir called “Ticking Clock” due out later this month.
Ira Rosen, 62, worked for almost 25 years producing news reports for “60 Minutes.” He was once a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a senior producer of Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer. The winner of 24 National Emmys and two Peabodys for his work, Rosen previously authored “The Warning: Accident at Three Mile Island.”
As for Mike Wallace, the news icon who made “60 Minutes” what it is today, Ira Rosen seems to have nothing but disdain. He accuses the news legend of once “stealing” an interview of Chris Rock away from his own son Chris Wallace. Mike Wallace also feuded with fellow “60 Minutes” anchor Morley Safer, going for months without even speaking with the man.
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This may have been because Mike Wallace would poach sources and stories from his colleagues. According to Rosen, “Mike would send his producers out to steal a source or a character who was key to a story, and then he would quickly film it before the other correspondent found out.”
Rosen says that Diane Sawyer was two faced explaining that, “If she was overly friendly and began to kiss you on the cheeks to say hello, chances are she was trashing you behind your back.”
And Diane Sawyer also hated Barbra Walters. He quotes her as saying about Walters, “I hate that woman. Don’t believe a word she says. She knifes me any chance she gets.”
Ira Rosen especially dislikes Katie Couric who worked as one of the 60 Minutes correspondents for a number of years. He said that Couric was lazy and disengaged and “thought she was smarter than all of us. She wasn’t.”
Rosen isn’t the first former CBS News producer to write a tell all book venting his anger at the network’s stars. Twenty years ago Bernie Goldberg wrote a book called “Bias” in which he accused his colleagues of being biased liberals who had a political agenda in how they reported the news. This led to Goldberg’s getting a new career as a media bashing contributor to Fox News.
Maybe Ira Rosen is also aspiring to go to Fox in the same way for his second career.
Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes, 336 pages, is due out in hardcover on February 16, 2021.
