Ann Curry Interview Baby and Signs and Reads
During ane of the biggest news events in history, ane of America'due south almost prominent telly journalists is not in the newsroom. Instead, Ann Curry, the sometime cohost of the Today show, is spending the COVID-19 shutdown in her Connecticut domicile, where she's been in quarantine with her hubby, tweeting.
Back-scratch has always been more of a hard-news reporter than a Television receiver personality, and she'due south used her days at dwelling house trying to pinpoint the most verifiable information about the pandemic to disseminate to her 1.5 one thousand thousand followers. It's non exactly the gilded glory pedestal she in one case occupied, merely similar everything Back-scratch does, it's earnest, honest work. "Information technology's not as if I desire to be on Goggle box talking about this stuff," Back-scratch assures me. "Simply I would love to be involved in making certain the right questions are asked. What is information technology that we take to exercise to survive this together? It's better than overeating out of worry."
On March 17, the week most of the United States grinds to an ominous, screeching halt, Curry finds reason to laugh amid all the bleakness on her timeline. "I've had much time to reflect during this COVID-19 crisis & I keep coming back to one matter," a user named Adam Peters posts on Twitter. "@AnnCurry was royally screwed & deserves the most epic comeback of all fourth dimension. I'd encounter fire for her, drive her around equally she eggs NBC execs, or work for her presidential campaign." Curry retweets the message with a grateful note: "Ok. I will acknowledge you lot fabricated me laugh, which is esp. appreciated today. Proficient morn, good morning, good morning Adam."
In her time at NBC, Curry became an icon for viewers like Peters, who valued the air of onetime-school journalistic nobility she lent Today. So much and then that fifty-fifty in a pandemic, her fans are nevertheless ruminating on her untimely departure. And yet, when receiving a compliment, Back-scratch finds a way to temper her reaction with a self-deprecating aside, lest she be perceived equally biting or gossipy. "Skilful morning, good morning, good morning" is a reference to one of her onscreen gaffes, which became a fixation for Today critics. (Depleted from a tough reporting assignment overseas, Curry once spaced out during a broadcast, greeting the audience three times instead of just once.)
A newshound at center, Curry—who has won seven Emmys and other prestigious awards for her reporting, including the Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center—is obsessed with the truth. She has "ever been a journalist who has wanted information to requite people power, and this moment is actually all near skillful, bankable information," she says of the COVID-nineteen crunch. The irony is that she can't seem to pinpoint good, bankable information that might explain what happened to her at Today, NBC News's crown jewel and morning-news ratings juggernaut, where she occupied the cohost spot alongside Matt Lauer for one brief, awkward year. "I yet don't really sympathize," she says. "I know I did nothing incorrect. I know I was skillful at my chore.
"They say where there's smoke, there's fire," she continues. "You can read the tea leaves. But you lot know, I'chiliad a fact-based reporter, and then it's hard for me to get out in that location, with something so shut to the vest. I don't know. I don't know." Her voice grows louder, more exasperated. She believes she can assistance bring truth to power when it comes to a global pandemic, but non her own professional history. "I don't know!" she says about her removal, before turning the question back outward: "Why?"
2 weeks prior, before the pandemic confined many of the states to our homes, Curry and I meet up for a walk in midtown Manhattan, non far from where the news anchor lives virtually of the time. Cases of the virus had only only been reported in the United states, and we're blissfully unaware that this will be i of our final opportunities to roam New York City worry-complimentary. The sprightly news anchor grabs my arm and hurries me toward downtown. As we walk, Curry attracts enough of attention. Not because she'south 1 of the nearly well-known television journalists of the modern era. People are looking at her considering of her coat, a Barbie-pink tailored wool jacket that pops out even in the metropolis's most cluttered sidewalks.
One onlooker asks Curry where she bought it. "Online!" the youthful 62-twelvemonth-old yells from backside her oversize Gucci sunglasses, smile and zooming past her admirer. For most four straight miles, a seemingly coincidental jaunt for the indefatigable announcer, Back-scratch only slows down to drop twenties into the easily of the homeless people she passes. One time nosotros arrive at the downtown restaurant where we'll be having luncheon (me, winded; her, energized), the compliments proceed coming. "I dearest your jacket, by the fashion," our waitress tells her equally she drops menus onto the table. "And I love your smock!" Curry replies cheerfully. "Information technology almost feels like a French workman's coat." The waitress smiles. "You get ane gratuitous if you lot piece of work here," she says. Back-scratch notes that she could utilize for a job to get the garb.
This is a joke, of class, but it hints at an uncomfortable truth: Curry has sort of been without a job, or at to the lowest degree an accordingly prominent one, for the concluding eight years. Her part on Today was a dream position that marked the height of her 30 years in television journalism, the culmination of all the hard piece of work she'd put in as an ballast on Dateline and every bit a reporter at NBC News. And yet the superlative gig was doomed from the start. Almost immediately, speculation swirled about Today's tepid ratings; the narrative was that Back-scratch and Lauer just didn't have the onscreen chemical science needed to sustain the prove's dominance, and Lauer was Today'due south prize pony. Within a few months, rumors leaked that Curry would be on her way out. And then, suddenly, she was.
On June 28, 2012, she made her terminal appearance beside Lauer, telling the audience through tears: "This is not as I expected, to always go out this couch, after 15 years [at NBC]. But I am so grateful, specially to all of you lot who watch." At the end of the farewell, Lauer leaned over to kiss Curry on the side of the head, and she flinched, shrinking away from her colleague'due south embrace—a plumbing equipment goodbye to a relationship that had long felt unnatural.
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Information technology would accept another half decade for viewers to comprehend the complexity of her good day. In 2017, Lauer was fired subsequently a female colleague defendant him of inappropriate sexual beliefs. Days after, the New York Times reported ii other women had come forrard with like complaints, and Variety reported boosted accusations. These allegations did not fall into the grey zone many #MeToo cases did, but rather painted a portrait of a long and disturbing pattern of sexually manipulative behavior in the workplace. Women accused Lauer of lording his power over them, of once exposing his penis without alarm, of making frequent lewd comments, and of gifting an unwanted sex toy. (In belatedly Nov of 2017, Lauer issued a statement proverb that he was "truly sorry" and that not all the allegations were right, but that "at that place is enough truth in these stories to make me experience embarrassed and aback." Notwithstanding, in 2018 he wrote to the Washington Post after these allegations were brought up once more. "I fully acknowledge that I acted inappropriately as a husband, father and chief at NBC. Nevertheless I desire to brand it perfectly clear that any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive or abusive actions on my office, at whatsoever time, are absolutely imitation.")
Later, Ronan Farrow's book Grab and Kill revealed more nigh the incident Lauer was fired for: a younger colleague alleged that he raped her in a hotel room during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. (Lauer has continually disputed these claims, writing in a May 2020 op-ed for Mediaite that he was "falsely accused of rape," and that he had a "consensual, yet inappropriate, relationship with a fellow employee in the workplace.")
Curry was revealed as one of the few powerful NBC employees who weren't trying to protect Lauer. In 2018, she told the Washington Post that 1 of Lauer'south accusers had confided in her about her cohost's beliefs in 2012: "I told management they had a problem and they needed to keep an center on him and how he deals with women." Back-scratch was in a personal and journalistic bind. She wanted to honor the wishes and confidentiality of her source, but also wanted to flag a breathy corruption of power. She protected the identity of her colleague when she went to NBC executives to issue a warning about Lauer—only to be pushed out of her role. Lauer, in his Mediaite op-ed, issues skepticism about the vagueness of Curry's description of her conversation with NBC executives—vagueness that stemmed from her want to protect the accuser's identity. Since her difference from the network, more female NBC employees have confided in her nigh Lauer, Curry says.
Information technology would exist like shooting fish in a barrel for Curry to give explosive interviews about her former workplace. But doing so would undermine the journalistic ethos she's cultivated since her early days equally a local news reporter in Oregon in the 1970s, where she was the first female person reporter at KTVL. ("I was told that women have no news judgment and tin can't bear a camera," she remembers. "It was at that moment that I felt very alone and vulnerable. I thought, 'I could fail, or I could think about all the women who are yet to come.' ") Over time, Curry developed an armor of dignity by avoiding gossip, seeking out stories that felt bigger than herself, and protecting her sources at all costs.
"In so many ways, [I've had to be] similar water between rocks," she tells me over luncheon. "To figure out the path that might help some and not injure others." In 2018, she gently nodded in understanding when the hosts of CBS This Morning asked if NBC did indeed accept a "climate of verbal sexual harassment," simply she hasn't elaborated further. "I have no involvement in pain people; my only interest is in figuring out if I can assist," she says. "I was in a position where, equally a reporter, I was unable to talk about it. I was asked, 'Delight keep this to yourself.' I kept that confidence, as I should accept. That was tough."
When I ask Back-scratch near her relationship with her former colleagues, her tone is respectfully chilly. "I yet have some friends," she says. If she is non exactly best pals with the tiptop brass, Curry remains a confidante for many of the women who are however there, trying to sort out their experiences. "There has been more than i [woman] who's come up to me now [about Lauer]," she says. "I hope they've come up to me because they know that I'll be empathetic and compassionate. I'm a right-and-a-incorrect girl.
"And I'k happy to exist their friend," she adds. "This is a deep level of suffering, from what I've learned. They're dealing with trauma that threatens to be lifelong."
Curry would like to move on from the unmarried most painful experience of her career. And still in that location are reminders everywhere. I ask Back-scratch if she'due south watched The Forenoon Prove, the drama inspired past the civilization at Today, starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell. "I hear it's skilful. A number of my friends saw it, and they liked it," she says. She didn't watch it, though: "I idea it might make me feel bad."
When I enquire Curry how, in hindsight, she feels nearly her time at Today, we're both instantly transported back to her uncomfortable final taping. "I think I'thousand…um…," she stammers, chewing painstakingly on her salade Niçoise. "I feel similar I've washed everything I should have washed." She begins to asphyxiate upward a bit before correcting course. "I'm mayhap earnest to a fault," she says. "If I had to do it over once again, and it meant going through it all over again, to attain the kind of reporting I'm really proud of, I would." What Curry regrets most is no longer being able to do the in-depth reporting on humanitarian disasters that she lived to embrace. "The sadness is, those stories, [afterwards I left], stopped being washed," she says. Globally minded geopolitical stories are widely considered to be ratings killers. "There is a college calling than selling newspapers or Tv time," Back-scratch says. "The internet has threatened the corporeality of coin that major media organizations can make. But if you're in a service manufacture, perchance you shouldn't be making so much money. Peradventure [journalism] shouldn't be a fundraising opportunity for megamillionaires."
After she was removed as cohost, Back-scratch was given the unofficial championship of anchor-at-large at Today, and the title of international and national contributor for NBC News. She was able to handpick a squad of producers and researchers to work on news reports. All the same, this didn't give her the kind of platform she might have expected. In 2015, she severed her partnership with NBC and went on to work on new shows for other networks: PBS'south We'll Run into Again, about people who've been separated past historical catastrophes and so reunited; and TNT and TBS's Chasing the Cure, about Americans with mystery illnesses. Curry says she's been approached by cable stations with offers to return to news reporting, but she'due south never plant good reason to do then. Instead, she's pouring her energy into smaller, self-directed projects. She speaks at universities; she contributes to National Geographic; she'southward doing research for a book.
Suddenly, Back-scratch interrupts our conversation to render to an earlier topic. "I feel I skirted your question, and I don't like to do that," she says. "I think because of how I was feeling, I didn't answer directly. Yous asked me how I await back on the show. I was feeling deeply, and I needed a moment.
"The bottom line is that it still hurts," she says. "It honestly hurts really deeply, considering I actually think I did nothing wrong. But in spite of the pain of information technology, which still lingers, I know that I contributed to some people suffering less.
"Just I tell you, it was tough," she adds. "Information technology was hard to walk that line, to non add more [suffering]. Boy, oh boy, was information technology tough."
Given how the globe has changed since our walk, it feels important to check in with Back-scratch over the phone. When I reach her in belatedly March, mid-shutdown, she sounds invigorated. She'due south been digging through the mountains of data about COVID-19, and right now she's amped about a piece she read on DIY ventilators. "I tweeted that to Donald Trump, to Vice President Pence, to Macron in France, to Boris Johnson in England, and said: 'Hey! FYI. You should exist thinking about this,' " she says. "Look, I don't know if any of them are reading my tweets. In that location is a style to participate in helping people. Information technology's non simply me because I'one thousand a journalist. It'due south all of u.s.a.."
Once again, I'm reminded that a veteran news anchor, who's done some of the more important on-the-ground reporting in places similar Darfur, Afghanistan, and Syria, is at present a menu-carrying member of…the peanut gallery. I remember the metaphor she used over lunch, of having to be similar h2o between rocks, when talking virtually her time at Today. If annihilation, peradventure she can identify what those rocks are, I prompt her. "I mean, it's been 8 years, right? And I recollect at this point, afterwards all that's been said and done, it simply feels unhelpful, and potentially hurtful, to talk about this. I would say that nosotros all know, especially we women, we know what those rocks are." For many women, a nondisclosure agreement is a big ane. "It'south a stone for a lot of people," she says. "But I decided a long time agone that I don't intendance near that. My biggest business is not pain others at the moment. Helping but not hurting—that's the water between rocks."
I enquire about the "climate of exact sexual harassment" she's mentioned in earlier interviews. "Are you asking me if I've ever been verbally sexually harassed? Yes, of course. Who hasn't? Information technology'southward still going on in many places, and it was going on where I worked."
Then I ask Curry the question that's been weighing on me since our start chat: Does she believe that her determination to warn NBC executives about Lauer had something to practise with her firing? I look her to dismiss this inquiry or offer a vague, NDA-compliant line about how all workplaces are inherently complicated. Instead, she allows herself a confession. "I still don't actually understand it," she says. "If I had known what was happening in the back rooms of power, then I would know. I evidently was not in those rooms."
At that place is a full general consensus that #MeToo brought many misdeeds to light, a lot of truth into the open. But in the movement's wake is a host of new questions for women: Did speaking up assist me, or damage me? Did this state of affairs change my career path? Did I help the state of affairs, or did I hurt it? Did I do as well much, or not enough? "I think that many people have guessed why [I was replaced], only I've held myself back," Back-scratch says. "I've asked people why, and I oasis't gotten a good reply."
But despite the questions that linger in her career, Curry is sure of one thing. "I have no regrets about how I've behaved," she says. "And I'm very proud, in spite of everything, of all the piece of work I was able to reach." She pauses for a vanquish. "I don't actually think about it very often; I actually don't. Simply when I exercise, it does hurt still, because it takes time to heal. But what I've learned is that you ascension stronger."
This story appears in the September 2020 result.
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