The job of the morning-show anchor involves connecting with the viewer. Now millions of people have been suddenly told that this fake relationship is over.
For the second week in a row, viewers of a network morning show woke up to a disturbing surprise: Two female hosts reporting, and working publicly through the emotion of, the ouster of their male colleague over allegations of sexual misconduct.
On Wednesday morning, it was Savannah Guthrie, joined by Hoda Kotb on the “Today” show, her voice shaking as she announced, “Breaking news overnight: Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News.” Last week, it was Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell on “CBS This Morning,” where Charlie Rose was fired .
How do we process the news, and the shattering of the morning shows? James Poniewozik and Margaret Lyons, two television critics for The Times, discuss.
JAMES PONIEWOZIK As in every case like this, the first, second and thousandth concern should be for the victims. The main lesson is straightforward: You shouldn’t harass or assault your co-workers, whatever your job, and you should be punished if you do.
But morning-show host is also a public job. By design, it involves a kind of connection with the home viewer, even if an artificial one. You bring people into your home for years, you feel as if you know them, though of course you don’t. Here, millions of people were suddenly told — twice — that this electronic, faux relationship was over. I can’t recall anything quite like this.
MARGARET LYONS I can’t either.
Morning TV lives and dies by its perceived intimacy. Of course, I don’t know Matt Lauer… but I don’t not know him either. He’s a celebrity — and much of celebrity culture is that one-way bond.
I wonder if this will shift one aspect of the conversation that sometimes exists around abuse and assault. Even when professing solidarity with survivors, many people still balk, still recoil and insist, “I don’t know anyone who would ever do that or has ever done that.” You do now, kind of.
PONIEWOZIK This is one thing I think is so valuable about a reaction like Savannah Guthrie’s. She says Mr. Lauer is her “dear, dear friend” but that this doesn’t excuse him. Likewise, Ms. King acknowledged being broken up, but repeated that Mr. Rose “does not get a pass.”
The reckoning is necessary, they’re saying, but that doesn’t make it easy. Maybe that gives the audience permission to process facts in their own lives that are not easy to handle. As Ms. Guthrie put it, “How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly?”
You might have been a fan of Mr. Lauer and Mr. Rose, or not. You may be surprised, or not. But as more and more of these bills come due — as I type, I just saw the news that Garrison Keillor says he was fired over accusations of inappropriate behavior — it’s not going to happen to only people you never liked.
LYONS I guess the hopeful part of me (a measly sliver at best) wonders if “Today” or “CBS This Morning” might grapple with this as a process, like when Katie Couric taught us about cancer screenings. “Welcome back to the third hour of ‘Today.’ Later, we’ll talk about restorative justice. But first, here’s how the patriarchy is bad for everyone …”
Clearing house is an important step, but it’s not the only step. Matt Lauer getting fired is new, but suggestions that “Today” is a sexist workplace … those are not new. And I’m curious how the show will address that, if at all.
PONIEWOZIK The flip side of the “morning shows are like a family” dynamic is that it has had some weird gender assumptions built in. The preconception, for instance, that you need a man and a woman hosting — like a mom and dad — and that, often, the man is cast as the one who lends gravitas and authority. (Those being relative terms in a genre that has room for “Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?”)
A side effect of these scandals has been that suddenly two of the big network morning shows were hosted by women. (The last example I recall was when Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts co-hosted “Good Morning America” — because Charles Gibson was given “World News Tonight” over Ms. Sawyer.) The designated male was gone — but the cameras stayed on! The news got told! The world kept spinning!
LYONS Yeah, I think the answer to “what would happen if two women hosted?” is just, “Then two women would be hosting.” I could live just fine in that world!
PONIEWOZIK There’s a pattern in these harassment scandals lately where after the revelation comes the forensic phase: People comb through the internet for old video-clip evidence that says, look, we should have seen the guy was bad news all along.
I saw plenty of examples right after Mr. Lauer was fired: a letch-y interview with Anne Hathaway; a tasteless 2012 “Today” sketch with Mr. Lauer as a victim of “sexual harassment”; the whole ugly, gender-charged ejection of Ann Curry. There was the atrocious “commander-in-chief forum” in the 2016 campaign, where, as I wrote at the time, Mr. Lauer interrupted Hillary Clinton constantly while pitching softballs to Donald J. Trump.
Condescending to women is bad in and of itself. And sexual harassment is bad in and of itself. And maybe they’re correlated — I’m not a psychologist, I just watch “Mindhunter.” But I’m skeptical that creeps will always leave an obvious trail of bread crumbs, especially people who are literally paid to give a performance, even if it’s for the news division.
LYONS Agreed. There is not a one-to-one correlation between “is sexist in public” and “assaults people in private.” Abusers get good at hiding their most abusive selves from the rest of the world. Why else would threats — “who would believe you?” — take such hold?
What I hope, though, is that more people start recognizing that behavior doesn’t have to rise to some insane level of horror to be considered unacceptable. You cannot imagine how tired I am of hearing that someone “was just joking around,” or that “I should lighten up,” or that “come on, I know he’s not a bad guy.
