Ashleigh Banfield was "pretty stunned" over Katie Couric reportedly slamming her memoir: One accusation "hurt my feelings deeply"

Banfield responded on her NewsNation show Banfield to The Daily Mail publishing excerpts from Couric's upcoming memoir, titled Going There. In it, Couric reportedly writes that she gave her then-MSNBC colleague Banfield the cold shoulder because helping her would've been "self-sabotage." "For a minute there, Ashleigh Banfield was the next big thing; I'd heard her father was telling anyone who'd listen that she was going to replace me," Couric wrote, according to The Daily Mail. "In that environment, mentorship sometimes felt like self-sabotage." Banfield said what really happened was, when she was reporting from Afghanistan, a New York Post reporter called her father, "who was near 80, extremely senile and living in a care home. And they got his landline. And they called and said, 'Are you afraid for your daughter?' To which he said, 'Yes. I think NBC should bring her home and give her a desk job like Katie's.'" That, says Banfield, was a far cry from what's in Couric's book. "So that hurt my feelings deeply. And I hope Couric corrects the record on that." Banfield went on to express her admiration for Couric's career, adding: "It saddens me that she didn't want to mentor me. I wasn't that much younger than Katie...I think we could have had a really good working relationship together." Calling Couric a trailblazer and her "No. 1 female journalist" on television and morning news, Banfield also denounced the notion that there's no room at the top for female colleagues in the news business. "I have never, ever found that that policy of helping other women younger than me, who might even be in my newsroom and maybe even take my job, has ever come back to bite me," said Banfield. "Never once. The opposite has happened. I'm a better journalist today for all the young women who I've worked or gave advice to. It came back to me in spades. And it will come back to you in spades, as well."