Monday's Washington Examiner notes that NBC's Ann Curry made the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women, but Curry somehow tried to claim that she "didn't ask" to be co-host of Today. (Ahem, cue "Curry and her agent expressed unhappiness" when she was passed over for Meredith Vieira.) Curry also claimed she was fighting against fear and ignorance. (This is heady stuff for someone who couldn't locate Illinois on a map, pointing to Minnesota instead.)
Forbes asked Curry if she feels responsible for the media platform she has: "People are scared. We have to be on target in terms of the information that we're giving. There is comfort in knowing. There is more fear when there is ignorance. Our job is to fight fear by telling them what they need to know."
It's a little astonishing that a national magazine like Forbes would allow Curry to suggest she's never been the slightest bit ambitious to climb the ladder at NBC:
"My goal was not to do this job. My goal was to reach as many people as possible with the most important news that I could give them. I didn't aspire to be on the 'Today' show; they offered me the job. I didn't ask to be the co-anchor of the 'Today' show; they gave me the job. I have a loyalty to the people who watch this broadcast. They put up with me for all of these years, and I want to take care of them."
Curry insisted scrutinizing her ambition seems sexist: "I've heard a lot of stereotypes. What I hate more than any other is this idea that a woman can only be successful because she somehow connived or engineered her rise. That she could not rise simply because she was too good to be denied. That irks me."
She also pressed on Forbes her bleeding heart of humanitarianism, one of the ways she's attempted to paper over her on-air flaws: "When we do not do stories about genocide, about deep human suffering, what are we doing as journalists? You cannot allow these kinds of stories to happen without giving a voice to these victims. They are members of our human family. What happens to the weakest amongst us, to those who suffer in these kinds of places, is an assault on our human family."
