Hi Rulers! Welcome to Friday. I come to you live from the end of isolation after a bout of Covid, even more excited than usual to waltz out of my seclusion and into the weekend. Luckily, I had some great reading material to keep me company in my solitude. Let me tell you all about it … Connie Chung, a woman of many firsts, is adding another one to her list: her first book. After a career of groundbreaking scoops, Chung is finally telling the story that was unfolding the whole time — her own. In a fiery new memoir, Connie, Chung chronicles how she navigated a sea of male co-workers who suffered from what she diagnoses as “big-shot-itis” — while trying very hard to never catch it herself. Taking readers behind the scenes, she recounts snagging her first stories as a copy girl for a local TV studio in her hometown of Washington, D.C., brushing shoulders with some of the most powerful men in the country as a correspondent for CBS News, and working her way up to the most coveted desk in the business as a co-anchor of the CBS Evening News. Often the only woman in the room, and certainly the only woman of Asian descent, Chung faced both subtle and overt racism and sexism from men who were loath to share a spotlight. Undeterred, Chung charged past barrier after barrier to cement her legacy as the first Asian American woman to anchor a major TV news program. Although infused with a “double dose of duty” as a Chinese American woman, Chung balanced deference with determination, blazing a trail for the generation of Asian women who followed — including a whole cohort of Connies. I sat down with Chung to talk about her latest and most personal story. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Ewing: You talk about how one of the central tenets of journalism is to never become the story. How does it feel to be both the subject of the story and its narrator? Chung: It's extremely uncomfortable. All my life, I did not intend to be the story. I became the story because of certain controversial interviews that I did. Anytime that happens to a reporter I think it’s disconcerting and wrong. We're just observers. I wrote my first draft, which is commonly called the “shitty first draft,” and it was so shitty that my editor said, ‘You're just giving me the facts.’ I said, ‘But that's what I do.’ And she said, ‘No, you have to tell how you feel.’ I was horrified that I had to tell how I felt because I didn't want to. I thought, ‘Why did I decide to write this book?’ I was very, very reluctant to pour out my innermost thoughts. But once convinced that that's what a memoir is, and perhaps I could do it gingerly, the way that [former Washington Post publisher] Katharine Graham did — she told about her tragedies and her ups and her downs without being a cry baby — that's what I tried to do. Ewing: Many men tried to convey to you throughout your career that you didn't belong, that you weren't good enough, but you just kept forging on. Did you deal with self-doubt? Chung: All the time. If a man was berating me or telling me I didn’t know what I was doing, I feared that he was right. I found it very hard to come back and say, ‘I'm going to do it however I think the correct way is anyway.’ I don't know why I was so driven and determined. I would not allow anyone to insinuate that I was not good enough. Later on, when I began having a relationship with my husband, I could say to him, ‘Do you know what so-and-so said to me today?’ And each time he would talk me off the ledge. His main message would always be, ‘Don't take them seriously. Just take your work seriously. And particularly in television news, don't take yourself seriously.’ Because everyone — particularly the men — had such humongous egos that they were insufferable. I said that they suffered from a disease called big-shot-itis. Ewing: In the book you talk about seeing the news media shift away from just reporting straight facts. Today, the question of what truth and what facts are seems to be in dispute. What's your take on the current state of news and of fact and truth? Chung: I'm truly astounded that fact and truth are not one and the same. I feel for journalists today who have to deal with that peculiar approach toward news — they actually have to try and assure the reader, the viewer, that what he or she is writing or telling them is the truth. In my day, it was always the truth. And now, I, as a viewer or a reader, am not sure. I have to go to too many news sources to see if I can ferret out the truth. For the most part though, there are still many, many good journalists. I don't want to put them in the same pot, because we know the ones who scream the loudest are the ones that are heard, and they're the ones who I think everyone objects to. Ewing: What’s your advice for young women, especially women of color, starting out in this industry? Chung: Be proud of who you are. Be proud of being a woman, be proud of being a minority. Never make excuses for who you are. If you have confidence in yourself and if you present yourself as a person who should be respected then you’ll gain that respect. If you tiptoe into the room, you’re never going to be noticed. I watched men and their behavior and I took pages from their playbook. They walk into the room as if they own it. They have an inherent confidence that they know what they’re doing, and people assume that they do. They speak with assuredness. We can’t obviously do everything the way men can — and we wouldn’t want to. Men do stupid things. And we know which things are stupid and we can avoid those. We can take the good tips. For one thing, men can compartmentalize: They think about work at work and they think about home at home. But we think about work at home, and we do the same at home with work. Ewing: It’s interesting that you talk about learning from men — to me that’s a sign of humility, and something that men are clearly not doing when it comes to women. Chung: There are a lot of men today, though, who are very enlightened. I’m very lucky that my husband has always been my foundation, my balance beam, my consigliere. He’s always boosted me, which is extremely generous and loving. I said in my book, everyone needs a mentor or a Maury. It’s good to have someone that you can talk to. I think it’s hard for anybody to go it alone. I’m very lucky — my husband gave me a life. I think that careers are great, but women also can’t forget to have a life. And you can get to that later — no pressure! Ewing: Reflecting back on your life, is there anything that you would do differently? Chung: Despite being very determined and bold, I should have said ‘no’ to management more firmly. I would revert back to being a good girl. Because in that era in which there were not many women in the business, I didn't want to be called the b-word. I didn't want to be called a diva. I didn't want to be uncooperative as a woman. As I put it in the book, I was a double dose of dutiful — not only as a woman trying to perpetually prove myself when I found that it was a test every day — but being Chinese, I am naturally dutiful. I was particularly dutiful to my parents, and I always saw authority figures as being smarter, better, and people I should listen to. To this day, I have these feelings of wanting to be cooperative and not bucking the system. But then I think to myself, ‘I'm 78 freaking years old!’
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