Veteran morning anchor Matt Lauer has been fired by NBC NEWS on Wednesday morning after an employee for the peacock network filed a complaint about “Inappropriate sexual behavior” inside the workplace. The stunning news was announced at the beginning of The Today Show by Lauer’s former co-host Savannah Guthrie.
NBC News chairman Andrew Lack released an early morning memo to staffers which revealed the complaint against the veteran television anchor on Monday night. Lack also stated,
While it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.
A visibly shaken Guthrie went on to say during the broadcast,
As I’m sure you can understand, we are devastated. I’m heartbroken for Matt.
Today Show staffers were only notified moments before going to air about Lauer’s termination. Once news broke about Lauer, journalists online spoke out about working on separate stories surrounding allegations against Lauer that NBC allegedly knew months prior to their announcement. New York Magazine and Huffington Post writer Yashar Ali tweeted:
I, and other reporters , have been aware of several women who have come forward privately in the past few months …even before Weinstein. They weren’t willing to go public though…they were terrified of Matt. https://t.co/jR3VV1AWGt
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) November 29, 2017
Matt Lauer put the fear of god into these women. He had relationships with reporters outside NBC that he cultivated just for this purpose. They knew that. https://t.co/47UKT8DuJA
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) November 29, 2017
Later, Variety’s New York Bureau Chief Ramin Setoodeh tweeted:
NBC was aware that Variety was working on a bombshell story about sexual harassment allegations against Matt Lauer.
— Ramin Setoodeh (@RaminSetoodeh) November 29, 2017
Lauer has been an institution at NBC. He was named co-anchor of the networks long-running morning show in 1997 after being the show’s newsreader for three years. Watch the announcement below:
This was the emotional opening of @TODAYshow pic.twitter.com/J8sin7giET
— Myles N. Miller (@MylesMill) November 29, 2017
