Connie Chung, here in 2023, says it’s painful to watch a bad interview: “I want to throw my shoe at the TV if someone doesn’t ask the question… that I would ask.”
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Veteran news anchor Connie Chung jokes that her success is partly down to alcohol and ribald humor, because early in her career she was often the only woman among an all-male team of journalists.
When Chung was away covering the 1972 presidential campaign, she would often retreat to her hotel room at night. She thought she was being responsible by preparing for the next day—then she noticed that the male reporters were getting news she had missed.
“I suddenly realized that they were pressuring the campaign manager and everyone else who worked for the candidate to spill the beans,” Chung says.
Chung began going to bars at night, and there, she says, the drinking and the jokes helped her break into the press’s “boys’ club.”
“It’s a great way to learn how to be a reporter,” she says. “I definitely don’t recommend it. But at the time, I just had to find a way.”
In her new memoirs ConnieIn her book, “The 40 Fingers,” Chung talks about her decades covering the news, her marriage to tabloid talk show host Maury Povich and prominent figures who behaved inappropriately toward her – including President Jimmy Carter, who, she says, lewdly pressed his knee against hers at a dinner party wearing a tuxedo.
In 1993, when Chung was Co-moderator of CBS Evening NewsShe was the first Asian American – and the second woman – to hold the position. She says it was “pretty clear” that veteran journalist Dan Rather didn’t want her there.
“I don’t blame him entirely, because he had Walter Cronkite’s chair for many years and had to move a few inches to make room for me,” she says. “And I think if I had been a different person, if I had been an animal, if I had been a plant … he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to share that chair with him.”
Throughout her career, Chung has often been one of the few Asian American news anchors on television. In 2020, Chung became aware of the impact she was having on the community when a writer named Connie Wong contacted her and told her about a generation of immigrants who had named their little girls after her.
“There were these … babies who were actually named ‘Connie Chung’ and then her last name,” Chung says. “Honestly, I can’t really comprehend how gigantic this is. It’s profound.”
Interview highlights
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On reporting on the trial of OJ Simpson – even though she didn’t want to
The men refused to be pushed in that direction. Dan Rather, my co-host at CBS News, did not want to address it. And 60 minutesBack then, it was all men, and they didn’t want anything to do with it. So they didn’t want anything to do with OJ Simpson. And frankly, neither did I. But management came to me and said, “Barbara Walters gets X, Diane Sawyer gets Y, and Katie Couric gets Z. You have to do this for the team.” I said, “I don’t want to, I don’t see any value in it. It’s tabloid.”
I have many regrets, but that’s one of the biggest: being the good girl who was told what to do. I fought back, but I was never able to stand up for myself and say, “I’m not doing this. Find someone else.”
How to learn to stake out a story from Barbara Walters
She picked up the phone herself. She wrote a letter. She faxed. She called. She nudged. She said, “Let’s go to lunch.” And I called it “Becoming Barbara.”
Barbara and I had a lot in common. She was clearly the pioneer and paved the way for us. But she was the breadwinner for her family because her father’s nightclubs went bust and she had to take care of her mother and father, support her mother and father and her disabled sister. I was also the breadwinner for my family for my mother and father. I supported them until they died. From about 25, I was their parent. We were both co-hosts with someone who despised us, a man. We were both fired after two years. We both adopted a child. We both married nice Jewish boys – although I think Barbara married maybe two or three. But I admired Barbara because she paved the way for us.
About her marriage to Maury Povich
I still wonder how it is that we are so perfect together, because we are so different. But the public persona does not give any indication of what is really behind our doors. … He is a very down-to-earth, realistic guy. What belies his public persona is that he is a huge reader. He is a politics buff. He is a history buff. He could outshine these pseudo-intellectuals who do interviews with important people. And I always say to him, “Why don’t you do a serious talk show? … You are so smart and people would know how smart you are.” And he says, “As long as you know that, everything is fine.” And I thought, My goodness! What a guy.
About antisociality
Maury and I stay home all the time. We’re so boring. If someone invites us to dinner, we have to think about it for a couple of months. … I’m the one who’s even more antisocial in that sense. I want to wash my face and take off my makeup and look scary. And I don’t want anyone else to see me looking scary.
On the state of television news today
When I see (a bad) interview on TV, I want to throw my shoe at it if someone doesn’t ask the question, the next question I would ask. … I miss that – the interviews and the opportunity to dig deeper, but I also miss the joy of pursuing a worthy story. And I know it sounds really old-fashioned, but if I can get a government to make mistakes or change an attitude about social ills or whatever, I find that so satisfying.
Why she wrote her memoirs
I found a letter from my father that he had written when I was already in the news business. … My parents were born in 1909 and 1911 in old China, pre-communist China. They grew up to very traditional parents. My mother’s feet were bound. Their marriage was arranged when she was only 12 and he was 14. They married at 17 and 19. … They had 10 – you won’t believe it – children. I was the tenth, the only one born in the United States. They had nine children in China, five of whom died as infants. Three of the infants who died were boys. …
So they raised five very brave women. And I have to say, they all could have been CEOs or had a different life if they had grown up in a different time. But… my father gave me this mission. He said, “Maybe you can carry on the Chung name. Tell everyone how we came to the United States,” meaning himself, my four older sisters, and my mother.
Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for the broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.
