It came out of the blue like a hurricane.
Matt Lauer, a fixture on NBC’s Today Show since 1994, was canned by NBC Wednesday for a sexual misconduct allegation.
According to a company press release later that day, NBC had strong reason to believe it may not have been an isolated incident.
This bombshell, came on the heels of the firing of Charlie Rose, an American television journalist, talk show host, and co-anchor of CBS This Morning after eight women told The Washington Post that he had acted inappropriately toward them over a number of years.
Previously, Mark Halperin, a senior political analyst for MSNBC, and a contributor and former co-managing editor with John Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics, was accused (first reported by CNN on October 26) of sexual harassment by five women, including one woman, claiming she was assaulted by the journalist in the early 2000s. He was fired by NBC.
The seasoned political analyst was also stripped of a book deal and an HBO project he was working on.
Widely reported sexual harassment charges against Fox News icon, Bill O'Reilly, resulted in the conservative talk show host settling a sexual harassment for a whopping $32 million, costing him his prime-time job. And television commentator Gretchen Carlson's sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes (who died in May) after alleging she had been fired for refusing Mr. Ailes sexual advances, forced the Fox News chairman and CEO to resign unceremoniously.
Not even print journalism was spared.
Star reporter, Glenn Thrush, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, was suspended this month, while the paper investigates reports of alleged sexually inappropriate behavior.
Most people, I would imagine, though admittedly shocked by the sexual harassment and abuse revelations that came out of Hollywood, involving motion picture mogul, Harvey Weinstein, Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey, and Jeffrey Tambor, star of the Amazon series, “Transparent,” felt, (as shameful as these allegations were) was merely Hollywood being Hollywood.
The entertainment industry, after all, has always been comprised of a mixed bag of scoundrels, flawed personalities, excessive characteristic traits, prone to dysfunctional behavior.
Similar to the entertainment industry, voters don’t even hold their elected representatives to such high standards anymore, which might explain why Sen. Al Franken and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are still alive and kicking after being accused of sexual harassment.
But we always held our news anchors up to a higher, much higher standard.
Which is why the Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose revelations came as such a crushing blow to most television viewers, especially their strong legion of followers.
Mr. Rose, in particular, the Walter Cronkite of the 21st century, who earned the trust and friendship of so many newsmakers and journalists over the years from Warren Buffett to New York Times’ columnist David Brooks; his secret past must have felt like a ton of bricks had just come raining down to those who felt they knew him.
And think, too, of Rose’s loyal viewers, who night after night enjoyed his insightful, fair and balanced interviews with some of the most high profiled newsmakers in the world.
Clearly, their trust was shattered beyond repair.
Ditto for Mr. Lauer, since beginning back in 1997, when he became co-host of the Today Show, viewers felt they knew this man, who was beamed into their living rooms morning after morning. They shared his laughter, his sad moments, and his outstanding journalistic skill and professionalism with the countless interviews he’s conducted over the last 20 years.
Much like the way people feel about Charlie Rose, viewers are shocked, like they’ve just been sucker punched by their best friend.
Though viewers didn’t know Lauer and Rose personally, they felt they knew their character, their signature charm, and they, accordingly, put their unabashed trust in their brand of journalism.
The trust has now been broken irreparably.
Understandably, a great many loyal viewers to these mainstream, popular, well regarded news programs, must be wondering how many other news personalities have some deep dark secrets (especially involving sexual abuse) tucked away in their closets, lurking just beneath the surface?
Many of us are just waiting for the shoe to drop on another news journalism icon.
Will these Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose scandals (that have rocked the news industry) trigger a reverberating effect, in that viewers will begin to look with askance and deep suspicion on journalists delivering the news?
I can’t help but think how the trust in the Catholic Church was shattered when the sexual abuse scandals, that had been covered up for decades, began to be reported in the mainstream press.
From 2001 to 2010, in fact, the Holy See, (the central governing body of the Catholic Church), investigated sexual abuse allegations involving about 3,000 priests, dating back fifty years. The Associated Press estimated the settlements of sex abuse cases from 1950 to 2007 totaled more than $2 billion.
To many congregants, because of these hideous crimes against priests delivering sermons and homilies to their loyal flock, they have fallen away from the church, having lost faith in the institution they put so much trust in.
According to an ABC poll not long ago, 52 percent of Americans, including three in 10 Catholics, expressed an unfavorable opinion of the Catholic Church, representing a new high. Similarly, unfavorable views of the church have risen by 25 points among all Americans, ABC reported.
Catholic priests now find themselves saddled with a steep hill to climb in regaining the trust of their congregants whose faith and trust in them has caused incalculable damage.
Whether this trust and abiding faith viewers had in their news anchors has been shattered beyond repair, much like the Catholic Church, as new allegations rise to the surface in the coming months and years ahead, only time will tell.
One aspect of these scandals that have come to light, has made one thing crystal clear: men behaving badly, no matter how famous you are, will no longer be tolerated.
As journalist and author Tina Brown told Charlie Rose (of all people) recently (when talking about the Harvey Weinstein scandal), “The culture has changed. It is no longer acceptable to do these things; and if you cross that line, you will be called out.”
-Bill Lucey
December 1, 2017
