Media icons fired in sex scandals
UNITED STATES: Two more American media celebrities - one a beloved, 75-year-old broadcaster, the other a presenter widely regarded as the king of breakfast television - have been felled by allegations of sexual harassment.
Garrison Keillor, the satirical writer who created the weekly show Prairie Home Companion, was fired yesterday by Minnesota Public Radio which said it had been investigating allegations of ‘‘inappropriate behaviour with an individual who worked for him.’’
Hours earlier, two shocked presenters of NBC’s Today show announced that their co-host, Matt Lauer, had been sacked over a complaint of ‘‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’’.
Lauer had hosted the show for 20 years and is thought to have reached a salary of US$25 million (NZ$36m) a year. He was also known as a powerbroker and a key decision-maker on a show that made hundreds of millions of dollars for the network.
Savannah Guthrie, Lauer’s cohost since 2012, said staff at NBC had received a note from their chairman, Andrew Lack, shortly before she went on the air yesterday (Wednesday) morning. He wrote: ‘‘While it is the first complaint about his behaviour in the over twenty years he has been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.’’
Two reporters at Variety magazine said they had already been investigating allegations made by multiple women against Lauer. NBC had also received inquiries from other publications preparing stories on Lauer, it was reported.
News of Keillor’s dismissal came on the day that he published a column in The Washington Post ridiculing suggestions that the Minnesota senator Al Franken should resign for alleged sexual misconduct. He said that Franken’s behaviour, including a photograph of him pretending to grasp the chest of a female colleague, was part of the ‘‘broad comedy of a sort that goes back to the middle ages’’.
He later offered an explanation of his own alleged misconduct in an email to the Minnesota Star Tribune. ‘‘I put my hand on a woman’s bare back,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologised. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.’’
He added: ‘‘If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order. But I’m just fine. I had a good long run and am grateful for it.’’
Keillor had stepped down as the host of A Prairie Home Companion last year, but Minnesota’s public radio station still broadcasts old editions as well as a show he did called The Writer’s Almanac. Yesterday the station said it would end these broadcasts and change the name of A Prairie Home Companion, which is now hosted by a musician called Chris Thile.