NBC Today show host Matt Lauer isn't pleased with the press he got after the network's catastrophic removal of co-host Ann Curry last year.
In an interview with New York magazine published online Sunday evening, Lauer laughably whined, "When the media covers something, it’s important to do basic homework. You can’t just repeat something over and over again until it sounds true. It’s not fair."
After that happened, Lauer got much of the blame.
New York magazine's Joe Hagan claimed Lauer got "agitated" when he brought up the media's reaction to Curry's abrupt departure.
“There was a piling on,” Lauer said. “Fair, untrue, unfair, it didn’t matter, there was a wave of negativity.
“When the media covers something, it’s important to do basic homework. You can’t just repeat something over and over again until it sounds true. It’s not fair. You know how much trouble we would be in if we did that? If we repeated what one person told us over and over like it was a basic fact? We would be done.”
If we repeated what one person told us over and over like it was a basic fact? We would be done.
Isn't that EXACTLY what people such as Lauer do to their political rivals virtually every single day?
Just ask Mitt Romney or George W. Bush.
I guess folks in the media don't like it when the press treat them with the same disrespect they treat those they disagree with.
On an unrelated note, there was another interesting segment in Hagan's lengthy report.
It seems that Lauer almost jumped ship in 2011.
According to Hagan, Lauer had been angered by a press leak that NBC execs were talking to Ryan Seacrest about eventually replacing him.
This led Lauer to speak to ABC execs about him participating in Katie Couric's new daytime talk show as well as taking on some other reporting duties for ABC News.
In the end, Lauer badly disappointed the ABC folks instead reworking a contract with NBC.
