Last week, the Washington Post published a fascinating and disturbing article about how NBC News spent decades protecting high-profile predators like Matt Lauer. WaPo also named Tom Brokaw as an alleged harasser – one woman, Linda Vesper, went on the record accusing Brokaw of harassment and assault, and a second woman remained anonymous and said that Brokaw harassed and groped her too. Brokaw was very, very upset about it and he sent out a lengthy email calling Vesper a liar and basically arguing that his reputation is more important than listening to women and believing women.
What bugged me (and many other people) is that “the women of NBC News” signed an open letter of support for Brokaw. Andrea Mitchell, Rachel Maddow, Maria Shriver and more all signed a letter saying that Brokaw had never harassed them or assaulted him, so it’s totally fine. I said I was disappointed in Maddow in particular for signing the letter, and now I’m even more disappointed, because it looks like Megyn Kelly – OF ALL PEOPLE – has a more thoughtful response to the Brokaw story than most of the respected female journalists and commentators in NBC News. What a crazy world.
NBC’s Megyn Kelly on Monday warned the throng of her female colleagues who are defending veteran TV anchor Tom Brokaw against sexual harassment allegations that “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Kelly made the remarks on her morning talk show, “Megyn Kelly Today,” after NBC News’ national correspondent Kate Snow brought up on the show how nearly 100 past and present network colleagues — including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski — have signed a letter supporting Brokaw in the wake of the allegations.
“It’s basically a character reference,” Kelly said. “And they’re saying, ‘For what it’s worth, my experience with him has always been honorable, and he’s always treated me well.’ And I understand that because when you love the person being under attack, you want to say, ‘This has been my experience.’”
Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, then cited her experience with late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, whom she has accused of sexual harassment.
“I will say that the same thing did happen at Fox,” Kelly said, referring to how there were those who defended Ailes, who resigned from his post in July 2016 amid a sexual harassment probe. “And the truth is, you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s not in any way to impugn Tom, who I love and who’s been so good to me. Just saying, you don’t know what you don’t know… What happens behind closed doors … we saw it at Fox News. We saw these women come out [in support] and I remember thinking, ‘You’re wrong. It happened to me, your statements are wrong and you’re gonna be proven wrong.’”
However, Kelly did note, “I don’t feel that here … I love Tom,” as she added, “I think [support] letters like that can be dicey.”
She’s exactly right. Megyn Kelly is right. I’ll say it again: MEGYN KELLY IS RIGHT. I understand women supporting a male colleague whom they believe is innocent. I understand supporting a male colleague by making it about his work. But I don’t understand the mindset of “well he never harassed or groped me, therefore those other bitches are lying.” The fact that Tom Brokaw never groped or harassed Andrea Mitchell or Rachel Maddow doesn’t preclude him from doing those things to other women.
Meanwhile, Page Six has another story where their sources claim that the women who signed the letter of support for Brokaw were pressured into it. A staffer told Page Six:
“We felt forced to sign the letter supporting Brokaw. We had no choice, particularly the lower level staffers. The letter was being handed around the office and the unspoken threat was that if your name was not on it, there would be some repercussion down the road. Execs are watching to see who signed and who didn’t. This was all about coming out in force to protect NBC’s golden boy; the network’s reputation is tied to Brokaw . . . If more women come forward, that’s a big problem.”
Another insider said the powerful names on the letter could intimidate other victims. “When you have over 100 women like Andrea Mitchell signing a letter of support without knowing the facts, it’s pretty scary . . . The letter will have a chilling effect on other women coming forward.”
An NBC News rep said, “The letter is a purely grass-roots effort, led by women outside of the company who are motivated by their own support for Tom Brokaw . . . Management has played absolutely no role whatsoever.”
Except the letter was led by Goldman exec Liz Bowyer — who also happens to be a producer for Brokaw’s NBC doc unit and has worked on two of his books.
Something is very rotten in the House of Peacock. The source is right: the letter is a power play, an intimidation tactic against anyone else who might want to come forward. Ugh. We live in a world where Megyn Kelly is right about something and Rachel Maddow signed a letter which will be used to silence victims of harassment and assault.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Rachel, you will be receiving the divorce papers shortly.
Yea…Rachel and I had been in therapy since the fiasco of 2016…but now…I think it’s time for a legal separation….
Rachel gives a 20-minute dissertation to explain that dessert is banana pudding. She gets credit for what others dig up. She’ll have a very knowledgeable panelist who only gets 40 seconds of air time.
I am watching her show less and less, because it’s really bizarre how she gets all this love for what is really a thinly veiled, self-aggrandizing show setup.
Agree. My husband often puts on MSNBC in the evenings and I hardly watch it. Partially because I listen to NPR all day in my office, so I’ve already heard whatever story they’re featuring in thoughtful detail, but partially because I can’t with Rachel. The tide turned for me when she crowed over that one page of D2S’s tax return last year (how was that only a year ago???) and it was such a nothing “get.” Her interview with James Comey wasn’t as compelling as Anderson Cooper’s, and she will take 15 minutes to equivocate on a “yes or no” question (or, like you said hilariously, will take 20 minutes to explain that dessert is banana pudding!) I was surprised and disappointed to see that so many women signed that letter, particularly Rachel. Time will tell.
OMG I can’t watch her. She’s awful and I felt bad for thinking that for a while. She takes for-freaking-ever to get to the point, is so damn delighted and amused by herself…it’s beyond annoying and time wasting. Chris Hayes and Ari Melber are so much better.
Here’s a clip of Stephen Colbert making fun of her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_rTWxJepO8
Glad I’m not the only one. I thought I might get some flak for saying what is increasingly my take on her show.
She has so many flourishes for comedians to mimic, doesn’t she?
In that vein,
I’d like to ask a few of my colleagues here to attest that I never ever smoked marijuana.
Never had the purple-haired indica here in CA; never put it in a fancy bong, never passed it around, never coughed for 3 minutes on the first hit. I mean, I don’t even know what a pinner is.
Thank you friends.
I mean, I’ve never seen you do any of these things. So I can with 100% certainty say that you’re obviously not capable of doing any of it. I hereby sign my support.
I too have never done anything like that, especially not in a country where it will only become legal for recreational use this coming summer. And I’m much too much of a chicken shit to discuss medical use with my doctor, so if I can’t do that, I obviously wouldn’t have dabbled on my own.
LMAO @Eric.
Erin…you said dab. Wink wink.
I don’t even know what to say except that, no, still have no well formed comment.
I just don’t understand how, depending on the accused, reactions vary so greatly. I mean I get liking and trusting someone. I get not imagining that they would ever do something like that. I would understand the defense of a husband or partner much better as that person is truly invested, effected, and wouldn’t want to think their partner capable of this behavior and the betrayal it also represents.
It’s just that both of these groups of women can be right. Maddow and company have good, respectful experiences with Brokaw AND others have suffered harassment. Why is that so hard to understand? I would want complaints made within “the system”, whether at the work place or criminally, whatever is appropriate. Certainly Brokaw has a right to self defense and others have the right to have their accusations heard.
I am so sick of all of this. I hope that we are seeing a turning point, culturally, where no one feels that v they can “get by” with stuff like this anymore and they don’t want to come close to that line. It will take awhile to be effective but here’s hoping.
Different situation but it reminds me of the pressure placed on certain Hollywood elite to sign that petition asking to free the pedophile Roman Polanski. Someone trusted by the specific actor/actresses would spin it as “protecting a Holocaust survivor” or “fighting against judicial overreach”. Also a lot of the NBC women have done joint reporting with Brokaw so I’m wondering if they are trying to protect the good they have done?
Alternatively why didn’t all these *highly intelligent* women band together to tell Brokaw that this petition and his defensive statement are a terrible idea. They decided to use a nuclear bomb to kill a budding potatoe.
Great comparison. I was profoundly disappointed by that letter. So many people I loved signed it that I couldn’t even realistically boycott them all unless I wanted to just give up watching movies.
Wow I feel like I’m stuck in the twilight zone, Megyn Kelly says something that makes sense?! 🤯
I find I tune out NBC/MSNBC more often these days. The culture that exists at the top hasn’t changed; it’s just trying to lie low rather and ride out the #metoo movement.
Sheesh, good for Megyn.
That’s horrifying about the letter. I saw Megyn’s comments last night and also was surprised to me nodding in affirmation. She hit the nail on the head. I noticed she still seems to support Brokaw, though.
Lovett or Leave It had a funny bit with a dramatic reading of Brokaw’s letter. Hearing it read like that, it brought home how he really laid on the self-righteous anger. Kinda like Cosby.
She absolutely is NOT the only one saying the right things. Look harder around you.
“Santa is black kids!” NEVER forget.
So now we have a situation where women feel forced to sign a letter and it is possible that something happened to them.
Dateline needs to move to a different network, damn it.
That is absolutely disgusting and I’m so disappointed in those women.
We still have a loooong way to go, but I am so glad that at least some victims are finally able to come forward and are being heard. I hope that the culture that supported sexism and harassment is really changing.
I know this won’t be a popular question, but I do wonder though… what happens when the accused really didn’t do it? I’m sure that will be rare bc most people would not put themselves through that, but what if?
I want to believe people when they step up, but I also don’t want people being falsely accused.
Steve Paikin, TVO in Canada, was recently accused. Thorough investigation and he was cleared. The woman accusing him was not believed either nearly from the start and that seems to be correct.
It’s so wrong that the higher-up women signed that letter. They definitely had a choice, and they chose incorrectly. No one knows what another woman’s experience with this man was. It reminds me of people trying to discredit Amber Heard because Depp never abused his former partners (that we know of, except for the fact that he definitely had rage issues with Kate Moss). It doesn’t matter if it happened to other people or not, and it is nobody’s place to try to discredit someone else’s claims in that way.
I just had a conversation like this with someone in my town. A priest that we knew was driving around in a van trying to get little boys to get in there with him was finally, FINALLY named by the church as a pedophile. We knew this 25 years ago. Of course a man said to me, well he always treated me well and I never witnessed this and then went off blaming the me too movement on accusing this “great and honorable” man. And I had to say to him, just because it didn’t happen to you does not mean it didn’t happen. And we were accusing him in 1993 long before the me too movement. Then he started going off about Trump and Comey and witch hunts and I knew the conversation was over.
She may be right, but please remember-this has everything to do with Megyn Kelly getting attention for Megyn Kelly. She championed a party that has been anti-woman for a very long time and she didn’t care until it affected her directly and that is still her primary concern-herself.
This is her seeing an opportunity to deflect attention away from the fact that her show is tanking and that she is not well liked.
Linda Vesper was smart —she documented EVERYTHING and told others at the time. It’s going to be tough to discredit her.
NBC is once again showing that they’re rotten from the top. In the scheme of things, what I read of the Brokaw accusations could have been much worse – but this full court press is making me think that they’re covering up something bigger. NBC has shown that it has a very high bar when it comes to what they’ll do to protect their main (male) asset, and it when those skeletons come out that the sh$t really hits the fan. Because it’s turns out that you can count on the Powers That Be at NBC always making the wrong choice.
I’m very disappointed in the mere existence of the letter, let alone the women who signed it, but I also wonder about the page six story..Brokaw hasn’t been the face of NBC news for over a dozen years, and Rachel M owns that prime hour in cable news now..nbc is all about profits, and ‘the past’ doesn’t get ratings. I’m no fan of MK, but she was the first one to call out trump sexism in the debates – completely counter to her fox bosses’ wishes, so I’m not that surprised.
I watched her show the other day because there was nothing else on and was horrified to find her charming and relatable. It’s a topsy-turvy world out there.
This headline sums it up and wins the Internet today, Kaiser. 👏
#Nailedit
I would not have signed a letter of support for Brokaw either, even if I thought he was being wrongly accused. It’s a legal matter.
TB would be unlikely to harass avowed lesbians or women over 70, so I believe Rachel & Andrea.
I haven’t watched MSNBC or any NBC news since the faux IRS scandal in 2013. I just cannot do it. I get my news online or BBC. Sometimes Canadian news. I prefer long form news format.
As to this situation, no surprise. It’s about protecting the brand. NBC is a mess though. Consider how they handled Ronan Farrow and the Weinstein issue, Matt Lauer and his behavior, Ann Curry’s dismissal, and now this? I’m sure there are other issues but I’m just listing a few. Different issues but it’s all part of the same rotten fish.
Mind you Fox is far worse but NBC is really awful. They all probably are.
Remember Barbara Walters talking about how she was treated at start of her television reporting career. It’s been bad forever. At NBC, I felt they went off the rails during Bryant Gumbel era. It was gross. Haven’t watched it since they pit Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville against each other. Yes I’m old 🙄
Wow, NBC News is rotten to the core. The letter existing at all is gross, and I can fully believe they forced people to sign. They fired Ann Curry after she told them they may have an issue with Lauer – she didn’t go public or demand he be fired, just notified the network that there were issues. And boom, she’s fired. So I can fully believe others felt pressured into signing this. But I’m disappointed in those with clout, like Maddow.
Megyn is right (in this one instance) and deserves credit for saying what she did. I have no issue with someone saying “that was not my experience with him” but you don’t get to decide what happened to others.
One of the reasons people seem to equate, he didn’t harass me he must be innocent, is this is how it plays in public. Every woman who dealt with Weinstein or Cosby or any of the accused and were not abused are thought to either be lying or denying. Logically it seems far more likely a person would only harass a few and not the numbers most of the accused are amassing.
When it all first came out, the number of victims of some of these men was what blew my mind the most. Yes I could understand how a few people could be harassed and the victims would not be listened to, but this was an army of victims. It just seemed unfathomable. Also, some of these people are very busy how did they find the time. Weinstein I sort of understood, his job was mainly the money guy and green lighting movies, but Cosby was one of the busiest guys in showbiz. It happened and now this is what people expect an abuser who abused tons of people. Reality is it is far more likely that there were a lot of men who took the opportunity to abuse a few people not the gazillion the current set of abusers amassed. They were just the worst ones.
Between the Ronan Farrow statement that NBC was trying to kill his Weinstein story, and now this, my opinion of NBC has sank very very low.
There is some major ish that needs to be cleaned from that place, and it was not just Matt Lauer.
All I can say is that I called this about Brokaw in 1992 when I was a lowly intern.
One of the most baffling things of all this wave of sexual harassment accusations is how so many people seem to think that a sexual predator will attack any woman that crosses their path. Oh, he’s never harassed me so he can’t be what that other woman is saying! Are we really so clueless? Predators are manipulative and know how to choose their victims. They’re not out of control. It’s so disappointing to see smart and educated women like Maddow use that short sighted argument.