Lesley Stahl

In her one-hour interview, Lesley Stahl talks about discovering her passion for journalism and her early years in television, including working as a producer at CBS affiliate WHDH in Boston. She discusses how she came to work for CBS News in the early 1970s as a Washington reporter and touches on the stories she covered, notably the Watergate scandal. She references the challenges of being a woman in the male-dominated news business of the time. She recounts how she came to be appointed as White House correspondent at CBS during the Carter administration and gives her impressions of its treatment of the press (in comparison to the subsequent Reagan administration). She speaks in some detail about her longtime association with the news magazine series 60 Minutes, outlining the process by which she puts a story segment together and giving her impressions of executive producers Don Hewitt and Jeff Fager. Finally, she discusses her work as moderator of Face the Nation, saying of her interviewing style: "I tried to be tough, I wanted to be tough. I think that's what they paid me to do. I wanted to make news and I think I was tenacious." Karen Herman conducted the interview on September 14, 2006 in New York, NY.