To: Andrew Lack, Chairman, NBC News and MSNBC, NBCUniversal
Replace Matt Lauer with one of the women NBC pushed out to keep him.
NBC either pushed out or let go several talented women from their Today show property, in order to keep a serial sexual predator and overt misogynist on staff. They should make this right by looking to qualified female candidates who worked hard to make the Today show one of the nation’s most popular news broadcasts.
Why is this important?
Women like Tamron Hall and Ann Curry have been passed over [1] for far too long, giving the impression to generations of Americans that women just aren't good enough.
It turns out that this negative judgement was being passed on women, both at NBC and most everywhere else, by predatory men who enjoyed keeping women’s status down [2] so that they could force female coworkers to indulge their perversions at the office.
Like many other serial harassers in journalism, Lauer’s private behavior also seemed to spill into open, public contempt for women in his news coverage. [3] Did guilt motivate these men to try and prevent women from ever being in a position to hold them accountable? Did their sexual objectification of women keep them from taking any women seriously? Hard to say. All we can see is that their lack of respect for women was integral to every aspect of the behavior and views of the powerful men now outed as serial sex pests, and their iron grip on authority in the media world has stifled the careers of their female counterparts. [4] There’s only one way that we can be sure of breaking the cycle of rewarding predatory men by giving them ever more power.
NBC News, please let’s try something new? When you go looking to replace Lauer, make an offer to one of the qualified women that you passed up for his sake.
[1] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/29/16714688/matt-lauer-today-show-ann-curry
[2] - https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/how-matt-lauer-reportedly-got-ann-curry-fired/
[3] - https://www.salon.com/2017/11/29/matt-lauer-and-the-emails-how-accused-harassers-conjured-a-fake-hillary-scandal/
[4] - https://www.thedailybeast.com/ann-curry-is-every-woman-cast-aside-for-a-shitty-media-man
It turns out that this negative judgement was being passed on women, both at NBC and most everywhere else, by predatory men who enjoyed keeping women’s status down [2] so that they could force female coworkers to indulge their perversions at the office.
Like many other serial harassers in journalism, Lauer’s private behavior also seemed to spill into open, public contempt for women in his news coverage. [3] Did guilt motivate these men to try and prevent women from ever being in a position to hold them accountable? Did their sexual objectification of women keep them from taking any women seriously? Hard to say. All we can see is that their lack of respect for women was integral to every aspect of the behavior and views of the powerful men now outed as serial sex pests, and their iron grip on authority in the media world has stifled the careers of their female counterparts. [4] There’s only one way that we can be sure of breaking the cycle of rewarding predatory men by giving them ever more power.
NBC News, please let’s try something new? When you go looking to replace Lauer, make an offer to one of the qualified women that you passed up for his sake.
[1] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/29/16714688/matt-lauer-today-show-ann-curry
[2] - https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/how-matt-lauer-reportedly-got-ann-curry-fired/
[3] - https://www.salon.com/2017/11/29/matt-lauer-and-the-emails-how-accused-harassers-conjured-a-fake-hillary-scandal/
[4] - https://www.thedailybeast.com/ann-curry-is-every-woman-cast-aside-for-a-shitty-media-man