No tomorrows for Today show host
The shameful roll call continues. Another high-profile career has been brought to a precipitous end by allegations of sexual impropriety. NBC’s Today show took to the airwaves Wednesday morning with the startling announcement that host Matt Lauer had been fired from the long-running daybreak program after network executives received a “detailed complaint” from a co-worker about inappropriate sexual conduct.
The news was delivered by clearly unsettled Today co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, who had learned of Lauer’s dismissal only moments before airtime.
Guthrie, who described herself as “heartbroken,” both for her co-host and friend and for “the brave colleague who came forward to tell her story,” read a statement from NBC News chairman Andy Lack that said, in part, that Lauer’s behaviour “represented, after serious review, a clear violation of our company’s standards” and that executives “were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.”
Lauer had been Today’s lead anchor and most recognizable on-air figure for more than two decades. His most recent contract is reported to have paid him more than US$20 million per year.
While the news of Lauer’s ouster clearly came as a shock to many of his co-workers and Today’s loyal millions of viewers, it was not a complete surprise within the television industry. As was the case before the fall of other noteworthy males such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, Lauer had been dogged by rumours that a story was about to break.
Media reports after last week’s announcement noted that the New York Times and Variety had been working on stories about Lauer for at least a few weeks.
The undoing of NBC’s morning star reinforces the notion that we are in a new age, a post-Weinstein age, in which harassment, abuse and other misdeeds of a sexual nature by people in positions of power will no longer be tolerated.
Those who have been wronged will not only be believed, they will be encouraged to speak their truths and embraced for having had the courage to do so.
On satellite network MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, co-host Willie Geist — whose shared-network duties have in the past included appearing with Lauer on Today -— described the fired host as “the most powerful person at NBC News,” and noted that “it took some real courage to step up and say, ‘I’m going to come out and tell my story.”’
With every new revelation, and each subsequent coming to terms with past misdeeds, it has become less perilous for women and men who have been victimized by those who wielded power over them to speak out.
The specific nature of the complaint against Lauer was not made public by NBC on Wednesday, but the reported wrong was enough to justify the abrupt ending of arguably the highest-profile career to be undone in recent weeks.
Victims have been empowered. Abusers are being exposed. A long-awaited cultural moment has arrived, and the current wave of reckonings has nowhere near reached its crest.
One can’t help wondering how many powerful people — men, for the most part — in how many corner offices, in how many companies and industries and empires, go to work these days and sit anxiously at their desks, wondering, “Is today the day they find out about me?”