TV networks and their stars face a reckoning
MATT Lauer, of NBC News, played the easygoing dad you could rely on – fun-loving but serious enough when he had to be.
Garrison Keillor, of public radio, was your quirky uncle, quick to spin a yarn, tell a corny joke, or even break into a song that, if you pay close attention, just might have a lesson in it.
Charlie Rose, of CBS, PBS and Bloomberg News, was the urbane, inquisitive host whose Manhattan sophistication was grounded by a humble North Carolina upbringing.
And Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News – what can you say? To half the block, he was the neighbourhood bully. But if you were with him, you swore by him. He had your back – as he reminded you every night.
These television luminaries were just right for the archetypal parts they inhabited for so many years – roles that not only made them big names in television news but also took them to the forefront of the national political discussion.
One by one, they have fallen to a range of allegations of sexual misconduct against them – the latest coming against Lauer and Keillor on Wednesday. And their sudden loss of stature is putting the lie to their television personae and swiftly ripping down the edifice of the old television news patriarchy in the process.
For their networks, these media stars, whose talent for storytelling was matched by their ability to charm audiences, were money in the bank. They also drew salaries that were commensurate to how important they were to their bosses’ budgets. Lauer and O’Reilly each made more than $20 million.
The size of those investments would have provided Today their networks with ample motive to turn a blind eye to their alleged misdeeds. And NBC and CBS, like Fox News before them, now face questions about where their managerial systems broke down – as they inarguably did – to allow such sickening behaviour to go unaddressed in ways that allowed the offences to repeat themselves over years.
The arrival of hard consequences for these men may have come too late in the news industry, but media organiations are inarguably leading the national reckoning now underway.
For the news business, this is the way it has to be: Its main product, after all, is integrity, which, in the case of the networks, is personified by those who sit behind the desk. Once the audience’s trust is lost, the entire enterprise falls apart.
The idea of anchor as authority – a stubbornly male prototype – was flawed. But the news organisations depend on their stars, and that conceit, to what often seems like an unhealthy degree. Their stature was such that they held tremendous power within their organisations.
The networks bear responsibility because they did so much to make them the larger-thanlife personalities they became, though fans had a part in that.
Now CBS and NBC have an opportunity to do something different for their morning shows when they choose successors for Rose and Lauer. Then again, when their shows broke the news of their dismissals, they did so with women-only teams – Gayle King and Nora O’Donnell on CBS and Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on NBC – that handled the tricky assignment with aplomb. No surprise here. Maybe their bosses can use it as the start of something.