Posted on 11/29/2017 11:34:12 AM PST by Red Badger
The face of ‘Today’ is accused by at least one staffer of sexual misconduct, and several bombshell stories are expected to reveal more.
In perhaps the most shocking media firing in years, NBC News Chairman Andy Lack on Wednesday fired the Today show’s Matt Lauer, the longtime star and mainstay of the news division’s most profitable franchise.
In a statement read on the air at the top of the program by Lauer’s shaken co-host, Savannah Guthrie, Lack said the abrupt termination was prompted by a “detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer.”
The bombshell announcement—a week after CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose was removed from his anchor chair, and had his eponymous PBS and Bloomberg Media show canceled, because of sexual-harassment complaints published by The Washington Post—came amid weeks-long rumors that unnamed outlets were preparing to run an investigation about allegations of Lauer’s workplace misconduct.
CNN reported The New York Times had been working on a story for weeks about Lauer’s alleged misconduct.
“I’m so sorry to say, Norah… that we know how they [Lauer’s NBC News colleagues] feel,” CBS This Morning co-anchor Gayle King said on the air, after her colleague Norah O’Donnell reported that Rose has been the subject of “at least three” new sexual-harassment complaints from female employees at CBS News. “We know that feeling of reeling and shock,” King continued, “and how you just get through it one day at a time. It’s a very, very sad story.”
Predictably, President Donald Trump was far less empathetic in a series of gloating tweets attacking NBC Chairman Lack, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and even MSNBC President Phil Griffin.
“Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,’” Trump tweeted. “But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!”
NBC News and MSNBC declined to comment on Trump’s attacks.
But Scarborough tweeted: “Looks like I picked a good day to stop responding to Trump’s bizarre tweets. He is not well.”
NBC News also did not comment on the New York Post’s report that Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a female employee during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The report quoted an anonymous NBC insider as saying the woman complained to the network’s human-resources officials Monday.
“This happened so quickly,” the insider told the Post. “She didn’t go to the media, she made a complaint to NBC’s human resources, and her evidence was so compelling that Matt was fired on Tuesday night. The victim says she has evidence that this has also happened to other women, but so far we don’t have evidence of that.”
Lack said the complaint was received Monday night. “It represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company’s standards,” Lack said. “As a result, we’ve decided to terminate his employment. While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.”
Lack’s statement continued: “Our highest priority is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels safe and protected, and to ensure that any actions that run counter to our core values are met with consequences, no matter who the offender. We are deeply saddened by this turn of events, but we will face it together as a news organization—and do it in as transparent a manner as we can.”
Guthrie, who joined Lauer as Today’s permanent cohost in 2012, kept her obviously strained composure as she discussed the terrible news with Hoda Kotb, sitting in for the banished Lauer.
“We just learned this moments ago, just this morning,” Guthrie said. “As I’m sure you can imagine, we are devastated. We are still processing all of this. And I will tell you, we do not know more than what I just shared with you. But we will be covering this story, as reporters, as journalists. I’m sure we will be learning more details in hours and days to come. And we promise we will share that with you.”
Turning to Kotb, Guthrie, near tears, added: “And Hoda, I mean, you know, all we can say for the moment is that we are heartbroken. I am heartbroken for Matt. He is my dear, dear friend and my partner, and he is beloved by many, many people here. And I am heartbroken for the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story, and any other women who have their own stories to tell. We are grappling with a dilemma that so many people have faced these past few weeks: How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly. And I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that this reckoning that so many organizations have been going through is important, it’s long overdue and must result in workplaces where all women, all people, feel safe and respected.”
Guthrie continued: “As painful as it is this moment in our culture, and this change, had to happen.”
“Yeah, it did,” Kotb responded, her face as mask of sadness. “This is a very tough morning for both of us. I’ve known Matt for 15 years, and I’ve loved him as a friend and as a colleague. And again, just like you were saying, Savannah, it’s hard to reconcile what we are hearing with the man who we know.”
Kotb continued: “We both woke up with this news, pre-dawn. We are trying to process it and trying make sense of it and it will take some time for that.”
Guthrie added, addressing viewers directly: “We are processing it with all of you at home. We promise to be transparent and straightforward and continue this important conversation… There’s no real way to do this.”
Guthrie concluded: ‘This show has been on air for more than 65 years. … We’re supposed to bring you the news…and so we move along…”
And she transitioned to the show’s second lead, and arguably less upsetting story: the ballistic-missile launch in North Korea.
NBC newbie Megyn Kelly added her voice to the controversy on her eponymous program on Today’s 9 a.m. hour.
“This one does hit close to home,” said the former Fox News star, grim-faced and straight to camera after showing clips of Guthrie and Kotb commiserating over Lauer’s professional demise. “I, too, have known Matt for a long time, and he has been a friend and kind and supportive to me in my transition to NBC News.
I see the anguish on my colleagues’ faces. When this happens, what we don’t see is the pain on the faces of those who found the courage to come forward. It is a terrifying thing to do.”
Kelly, whose complaint about her harassment by the late Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes was a major factor in Ailes’s firing in July 2016, continued: “We don’t see the career opportunities women lose because of sexual harassment, or the intense stress it causes a woman dealing with it when she comes to work each day. I am thinking of those women this morning, hoping they are OK.
“The days to come will not be easy. We are in the middle of a sea change in this country, an empowerment revolution, in which women who for years felt they had no choice but to simply deal with being harassed at work are now starting to picture another reality, to feel that change is within their grasp.
“As painful as this moment is for so many here at NBC today, at CBS earlier this month, at Fox News over the last year, in Hollywood this fall, it is a sign of progress, of women finding their voices, their courage, and of the erosion of a shameful power imbalance that has been in place for far too long…
“My experience is that a news organization is bigger than any one person. They all face challenges. They all stumble. But the good ones stay standing and forge forward, fulfilling their core mission: journalism.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to see them ALL return for the 2020 ELECTIONS after SEXUAL HARASSMENT treatment.
While it may be delicious to watch these leftist propagandists getting their comeuppance, don’t think for a minute that this is going to have any positive effect on network bias. They will all be replaces by younger and even more radical Marxists.
Lauer gets no chance to defend himself. He is simply gone.
People who know him, who say this doesn’t sound like the Lauer they know, simply accept it and move on.
Whether he is guilty or not, this is rather Orwellian.
INCONVENIENT FACTOID-—George was President BJ Bill’s top man......Hillary commandeered G/S to head her Bimbo Eruption Team that operated in the Old West Wing for 8 years.... using our tax dollars.
INCONVENIENT FACTOID-—Georgio was party to Hillary’s savaging and destroying Bill’s victims....using tax dollars.
INCONVENIENT FACTOID-—Georgio accompanied Billy on the Lolita Express to Pedo Island.
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(HAT TIP PUBLIUS911)----Lost in the confusion and noise is the real event everyone seems to have forgotten: LED BY HILLARY, the Clintons' war on women army (paid for by taxpayers) lasted 8 years! and did nothing else!
ABC-TV anchor George Stephanopoulous----then Pres Bill's aide----was commandeered to head Hillary's Bimbo Eruption Team.
THE WHITE HOUSE OLD WEST WING "BIMBO WAR ROOM" CREATED BY HILLARY, WAS STAFFED WITH A DOZEN TAXPAYER-PAID "INVESTIGATORS" WITH THE EXCLUSIVE TASK OF INVESTIGATING AND DESTROYING WILLIE'S WOMEN---HILLARY CALLED THEM BIMBO ERUPTIONS.
Has Hillary been asked about that? If not, why not?
Remember, Bill knew it was all true....but he allowed our tax dollars to be extorted for Hillary's vengeful war on willy's women.....and to save her political ***.
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Taxpayers demand Congress call Hillary and these staffers to account for their demeaning-anti-women activity paid for by taxpayers.
=================================
FREEPER ACTION --- Contact Cong Jim Jordan---he is heavily pushing for a Clinton investigation regarding fraud, emails, perjury, Uranium One, bribes, the Clinton Foundation, etc.
EMAIL FORM at Jordan's web site
WASHINGTON, DC OFFICE Washington, DC 20515
Tele (202) 225-2676
Fax (202) 226-0577
Unless there are tapes...
Brian is from Iowa, he only Works in Outer Space.
“Predictably, President Donald Trump was far less empathetic in a series of gloating tweets ....”
WTF! They expect Trump to empathize with a sexual harasser — any sexual harasser, let alone a hypocritical propagator of fake news.
I understand what you’re saying, but in a case like this when a prominent person gets fired quickly I have a different take. I assume the employer knew about the guy’s story for years, and looked the other way all along. They fired him this time because it was about to become a public story outside NBC.
F'n click bait.
After reading a few of the president's Twitter posts this morning, it felt like Christmas came almost a month early. LMAO.
He was? I thought Neil Armstrong was the first.
Yeah, look, no one on this board would ever tolerate assault or true harassment, but I fear this is, and actually has been, becoming weaponized. Who among us has not in some manner watched a female in the workplace ever so slightly use their feminine flirtatious charm to either advance their own career, or to cast dark and foreboding aspersions on a helpless coworker, colleague, or immediate supervisor whom they somehow came to dislike?
I have seen innocent and innocuous banter be turned against a worker to intentionally make it seem something it was not.
Again, setting aside true assault or honest harassment, I am growing concerned that we are creating a national Salem witch trial where men are purposefully being intimidated as women will — even more so now — be promoted well ahead of their otherwise longer serving and more talented male colleague, all in the name of “empowering women” and diversity in the corporate culture.
And the evidence must have been incontrovertible. Otherwise, NBC would have allowed him to continue and deny the allegations.
Matt Lauer banging some chick in Russia.....BUT..was they colluding?
thanks.
yikes...bad behavior, but no mention of sexual assault.
Back in the day - an unwanted kiss or grabbed butt would have gotten most slugged.
I wonder if she gave the gifts back ?
Exactly. Lots of celebrating going on. But this is not a good thing. And it isn’t stopping with dems. This is a raw power rape of men in our society.
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