Former TV information anchor Connie Chung makes some bombshell claims in her memoir, together with the alleged dismissive therapy she obtained from her colleague Dan Fairly when the 2 labored collectively within the Nineteen Nineties.
Chung was simply the second lady after Barbara Walters and the primary Asian American to be a community anchor when she began co-anchoring “CBS Night Information” with Fairly in 1993 as an try to assist the present’s flagging scores.
“This wasn’t only a private milestone however one for ladies and minorities, as I might be the primary of each teams to coanchor the CBS Information flagship broadcast,” Chung writes in “Connie.” “I felt extremely fortunate to be the one using the crest.”
Whereas her tenure broke some glass ceilings and she or he even referred to it as her “dream job,” Chung claimed her place did not shield her from some sexist feedback from colleagues.
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Veteran journalist Connie Chung’s new memoir, “Connie.” (Fox Information Digital/Cortney O’Brien)
“Whereas Fairly publicly welcomed Chung, he privately put her in her place, telling her: ‘Now you will have to begin studying the newspaper,’” The Boston Globe reported of Chung’s new e-book, “Connie.”
“I swallowed laborious,” she writes of the incident. “Was this his thought of begin a partnership? I used to be forty-seven and had spent half my life within the information enterprise – did he assume I had been studying the comics? We have been simply out of the gate in what I hoped could be a future. My response: Silence.”
Chung additionally wrote that Fairly instructed her, “I’ll cowl the tales on the market within the subject, and also you learn the teleprompter.” Her co-anchor, she added, was “wound tight and had no humorousness” and held “an inherent bias relating to girls.”
She went additional to allege that Fairly tried to undercut her and query her journalistic talents amongst their colleagues.
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Journalist Dan Fairly attends The Impartial Filmmaker Mission’s twenty fifth Annual Gotham Impartial Movie Awards in New York. (Picture by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Fairly would later step down from his function as CBS’ night information anchor in 2005 and ultimately depart the community the next yr after reporting a discredited story about then-President George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era service within the Nationwide Guard. Fairly, who at 92 nonetheless maintains a sharply left-wing presence on social media, was interviewed by CBS earlier this yr about his time on the community and his profession in journalism.
Chung had extra revelations in regards to the habits of male anchors in TV information, together with Bryant Gumbel.
“In her e-book, Chung writes about how so many males in TV information, particularly the anchormen, endure from a illness she calls ‘huge shot-itis,’” the Globe reported. “For instance, Bryant Gumbel had in his NBC contract that ‘At the moment Present’ co-anchor Jane Pauley may by no means say ‘Good morning’ first nor say ‘Have day’ on the finish of the present.”
Chung described her firing from CBS in 2005 as “devastating,” however she by no means needed any sympathy.
“That was not my angle once I was working,” she stated. “I by no means ran to the women room and cried, as a result of I all the time believed that there was no crying in baseball.”
Fairly denied having something to do together with her exit and reportedly instructed The Washington Submit on the time, “No one has heard a essential remark from me about Connie” and her elimination “got here as a shock to us.”
New York, NY – 1998: (L-R) Charles Gibson, Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Connie Chung promotional picture for the ABC TV collection “20/20.” (Picture by Michael O’Neill /Walt Disney Tv through Getty Photographs)
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Fox Information Digital has reached out to Chung, Fairly and Gumbel for additional remark.
Chung would later be part of ABC Information as co-anchor and correspondent of the favored present “20/20,” becoming a member of Walters and Diane Sawyer.
Now, she says that a number of girls have thanked her for breaking some glass ceilings and that some Asian-American mother and father had even named their daughters Connie after her.
Chung scored some main interviews throughout her profession, together with NBA star Magic Johnson after his HIV-positive analysis in 1991.
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Fox Information Digital’s Brian Flood and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
