Diane Sawyer Talks Nixon, Ailes, Maddow

ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer lets loose in new issue of Parade about cable news, her work as a reporter, and life in the Nixon White House. "You have to believe your first job is to be a powerful witness," she says of covering the earthquake in Haiti. "I say powerful in the sense that there are 500 people in front of you who need water, and all you want to do is drop everything and go get them water. But you have to remember that your job is to help get water for five million people," turning their pain "into a fulcrum that moves the world to help." In the Web extra, Sawyer confesses her belief that cable news networks "are invigorating the debate" by teaching people "through the dialectic" of a lively back and forth. She calls Fox News chief Roger Ailes "smart as a whip" and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow "great television." Sawyer, a former aide to Nixon, says the former president didn't consider her return to journalism at the end of his presidency "a betrayal," and that she went into exile with him in San Clemente because "I had a sense of duty. I felt you don't get to choose just being there in celebrated times and then get to walk away when someone is living in defeat."