NBC Releases Internal Investigation Into Matt Lauer, Claims ‘No Evidence’ of Complaints Before November
NBC News has released findings from its internal investigation into Matt Lauer, and one of the core findings is the claim that its leadership did not receive any complaints about the anchor prior to last November, when the reports about his alleged behavior publicly dropped.
The report stated that the investigation turned up no evidence that leadership at NBC News, Today or human resources “received complaints” about Lauer’s “workplace behavior prior to November 27, 2017. All four women who came forward confirmed that they did not tell their direct manager or anyone else in a position of authority about their sexual encounters with Lauer.
You may remember that recent Washington Post report on NBC’s behind-the-scenes grappling with Lauer and his behavior. Ann Curry went on the record with this claim to the Post:
During her last year on the “Today” show, in 2012, Lauer’s co-host Ann Curry said she approached two members of NBC’s management team after an NBC female staffer told her she was “sexually harassed physically” by Lauer. “A woman approached me and asked me tearfully if I could help her,” Curry recalled recently, in her first public comments about the episode. “She was afraid of losing her job… I believed her.”
Well, Curry spoke to the investigators, and this was their takeaway:
Here’s what the report has to say about Ann Curry, who spoke to the internal team conducting the Lauer investigation pic.twitter.com/vEr8Q9EVq8
— Steven Perlberg (@perlberg) May 9, 2018
“The investigation team,” it continues, “does not believe that there is a current widespread or systemic pattern of behavior that violates Company policy or a current culture of harassment in the News Division, based on our interviews, the cultural assessment and our review of the nature and number of workplace complaints in the News Division.”
Though the Post‘s recent report notes Curry said there was “pervasive verbal sexual harassment at NBC.”
[image via screengrab]
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