American journalist and author who earned a regional Emmy for a series of stories she wrote and produced about American doctors assisting Chinese children with disabilities, while working at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City from 1990 to 1996.
In 1996, Clayson moved to Los Angeles, California, where she worked as a correspondent for Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and other ABC News broadcasts. Her work included coverage of Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, the O.J. Simpson civil trial, and NATO’s strikes against Kosovo and the resulting refugee crisis in Macedonia. From 1999 to 2002, she anchored The Early Show through the new millennium, the inauguration of President George W. Bush, and the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001.
Clayson may be best known for her awkward confrontation with Early Show food and style contributor Martha Stewart during this period; Stewart was involved in the ImClone stock trading case, but retained her Early Show contributor duties during the initial stages of the controversy. CBS required Stewart to address the issue as a condition of keeping those contributor duties. Stewart, upon consulting her legal team, agreed to take questions on air, but not in a separate interview. As a result, during one of Stewart’s usual live cooking segments (in June 2002), Clayson, who normally assisted Stewart with preparing the meal, asked her to comment on her involvement with ImClone and her selling of ImClone stock just one day before an application for a new ImClone cancer drug was rejected; a visibly uncomfortable Stewart, obsessively chopping vegetables for a salad, evaded Clayson’s questions, citing her inability to comment on an ongoing investigation. (Stewart was indicted in 2003, tried and convicted in 2004, and served five months in Federal prison for her involvement in the case.) Stewart stopped contributing to the program after the appearance, which was immortalized in an NBC TV-movie of Stewart’s life a few months later (with Cybill Shepherd playing the role of Stewart).
Her first book, I Am a Mother!, was released in March 2007 and chronicles her decision to leave the network news business to have a family. She regularly speaks on the topic at events across the United States.
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