Connie Chung on Her Historic Career, Combating Sexism and Generation Connie

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And we turn now from that female pioneer to another, a trailblazer in television news. Connie Chung was one of the first women and the first Asian American woman to anchor a major network newscast. Her new memoir, “Connie,” tells the tale of how she broke down gender barriers in a male dominated industry. And she’s joining Walter Isaacson to share that story.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Connie Chung, welcome to the show.

CONNIE CHUNG, AUTHOR, “CONNIE: A MEMOIR”: Thank you, Walter. Happy to be with you.

ISAACSON: Your book is about breaking gender barriers in part. And one of the interesting things is the first chapter called “Male Envy.” And you said something very interesting, I realized I could be the son my parents desperately wanted. Tell me about that.

CHUNG: Well, it’s true, Walter. I know that my father had written me a letter when I was in the news business already. And he said, maybe you can carry on the name Chung the way sons do. And I suddenly realized, because they had lost three boys as infants, that they desperately wanted a son. So, I thought I would solidify that name in history the way males carry on the last name of the family name in perpetuity. I took it seriously. And I took the whole male thing seriously. That’s why my first chapter is “Male Envy.” I envy what men could do in any corporation, in any business. They could command respect just by virtue of being a man. And I wanted to gain that kind of respect automatically.

ISAACSON: You know, when you say you were both a woman and Chinese, in the book, you refer to that as a twofer. Was that both a good thing and a bad thing?

CHUNG: Yes, it was. It was primarily — for me, it was a woman’s battle because women were just not — actually, not acceptable. We were very much forced upon corporations, upon news organizations to be hired thanks to the Civil Rights Law of 1964 and also, because of lawsuits that seemed to be creeping on to the corporate landscape. And unfortunately, for the corporations, they had to cough up jobs for women. Minorities were strong, but it was primarily black groups that were pushing hard. Asian groups have never been on the map for aggressive equality.

ISAACSON: How did this affect the way you presented yourself on TV? You say in the book, I became aggressive, tough, bawdy, and extremely competitive. Yes, I looked like a lotus blossom, you’re right, but I talked like a sailor.

CHUNG: It was just my way of creating an armor, because my approach was simply that I grew up a very, very shy, demure, Chinese a little girl. And in school, I kind of sought student government positions, and that sort of gave me the courage to stand up and speak for myself. Well, when I got into the news business and realized what an aggressive business it was, that reporters had to step out of their normal lanes and just engage in behavior that probably wasn’t something their mother wanted them to do. And so, I took that on, but I took pages from the male playbook. I knew that I needed to walk into a room and own it. I knew that I needed to be strong and aggressive. And so, I did that. But in the process, I also developed a potty mouth. And I’m not proud of it, but it was my — I don’t know, it was a funny thing. I just felt like if I could talk trash the way the men talked trash then maybe I could be one of the boys.

ISAACSON: One of the scenes early on in that is 1972. The famous McGovern campaign. Timothy Crouse does “The Boys on the Bus.” You’re the one who isn’t the boy. And you don’t hang around the bar with everybody else at the Wayfair Hotel until you realize you have to change the way you act. Tell me about that.

CHUNG: Well, I was — as Timothy Crouse said in his book, that I was always in my room, tucked into bed. And, you know, Walter, I would call the — it was way before cell phones, way before we could get news automatically just by tapping our little phone. I would call first thing in the morning. I’d call the overnight desk at CBS News in Washington, and I’d say, what happened? Anything happened overnight? Any stories break in the morning? What’s in The Washington Post? What’s in The New York Times? What’s in the Boston Globe and L.A. Times? And he was reading the wires, the wire services, UDUPI (ph) and Reuters, and he could tell me about any story that had occurred overnight. I would be poised to stick a microphone in George McGovern’s face, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972, and I would question him about it, and all the bleary eyed reporters who had been at the bar all night were just listening, because they knew it might be the story of the day. When I realized that those boys in the bar were breaking stories, I thought, how did they do that? And it suddenly dawned on me, the campaign workers were spilling the beans in the bar. So, I ended my early overnights, went to the bar, and tried to drink them under the table, too.

ISAACSON: You were very determined, and so was your co-anchor at the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather. In many ways, you’re both aggressive, determined, competitive. And was it inevitable that the two of you clashed? And tell me the story of Oklahoma City, where it really came to a head.

CHUNG: Yes, I do think it was inevitable that it would clash into a battle royale. What happened with Oklahoma City was that I happened to be on the West Coast and I learned very quickly that the bombing in Oklahoma City had occurred at the Murrah building. And so, I called the office in New York and said, do you want me to go? Because as reporters, as soon as we hear about a breaking story, we want to go there. We don’t run from it. The CBS headquarters in New York sent me to Oklahoma City at the same time, Dan was on — Dan Rather was on vacation in Texas, which is his home. And it was a time before cell phones. It was very easy to be out of touch. And they tried to call him, but he — or contact him and they could not get to him. So, there I was. I was the first one on the ground in Oklahoma City. They had sent a reporter from New York named Scott Kelly. We were the first ones on the ground. We not only broke into regular programming to report about the horrific bombing caused by Timothy McVeigh, but I was the only sole anchor of the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS, to be anchoring that night from the scene. CBS was very proud that we were so quick, so fast. Dan Rather was not happy because he felt that he had been on every big breaking story for years. I had no idea that all this drama was going on. When I came back to New York two days later, after anchoring and doing special reports in Oklahoma City, I discovered a very bad scene that Dan was, in fact, furious that he had not been sent. And in fact, I had been sent. But there had been a pattern, Walter, for over the period of two years that I was co-anchoring, that anytime I went out and covered a story, Dan was not happy about it and wanted to cover that story too. Ultimately, Dan told me that I needed to stay in the studio and read the teleprompter and not go out on stories. It was — I — to me, it sounded like stay in the kitchen and stay — you know, stay home. It was where you women belong. I may be taking it to an extreme, but it was, just read the teleprompter, don’t try and be a — get out in the field.

ISAACSON: When you moved to ABC News, there are two other great women stars, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer. And you say, you saw them with you as a powerful triumvirate. I envision we would be a sisterhood. Taking on the boys club. I foolishly believed that women would be my comrades. What happened and why?

CHUNG: Barbara and Diane were in a battle, competing for interviews, that were — every — I don’t know, like, movie stars, the get of the day. Whatever story is a big story, they were both going after it. And at ABC, had I known, if management had told me that I could not pursue stories that I wanted to pursue, even if Barbara and Diane were pursuing them, I would not have gone there. In fact, I would — if Barbara and Diane were competing for an interview or for a story, I could not go after it. It was the most bizarre — there were bizarre rules. But in many ways, I thought they would welcome me so that we could gang up and fight the boys, but it was not the case. In fact, Barbara and Diane kind of were trying to recruit me so that I could battle with the other one. So, it was a peculiar setup. But I think I’ve figured out what it was all about, women then and even before then, we’re only allowed a tiny sliver of the big pie that consisted mostly of men. And so, since we had to share that tiny sliver of the pie, Barbara and Diane were battling for the top, the biggest portion of that pie, and I just didn’t fit in. So, I backed off. I didn’t want to be part of that.

ISAACSON: You write that television news devolved in the 1990s, and one of the themes in your book is this tabloidization of news. And you were kind of a part of that, whether it be O. J. Simpson or Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Tell me, why did it devolve, and what did you feel about that sort of tabloid culture hitting the national news?

CHUNG: The problem that caused the news to — television is to devolve, and actually newspapers and print as well, was the fact that particularly in television, the three networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, were taken over by companies that no longer believed in the value of journalism. What happened was they wanted to make money. Consequently, each of the networks wanted to get viewers into the tent. And the way to get viewers into the tent was to do pop culture, interviews with movie stars, interviews with someone who suddenly announced something that everybody wanted to know about, but it may not be a savory subject. So, suddenly, we found ourselves in this tabloid milieu in which I found that the men would not try and get these interviews. I then was asked — not asked, but told that Dan Rather would not touch the O. J. Simpson story that the 60 Minutes people would not touch it. The management told me that I needed to go after an O. J. character because Barbara Walters was getting this, Diane Sawyer was getting that. And I thought, so what? I don’t think we should touch the story either. And they said, but nobody else will at CBS. You have to do it.

ISAACSON: In the 1990s, you interviewed Donald Trump. Do you think that the tabloidization and reality TV infection of news has brought us characters like Donald Trump to the fore?

CHUNG: You’re right. I interviewed him very reluctantly. This was a tabloid king. He was touting his real estate long before he decided to run for president. And I was doing a magazine program. I was the only correspondent on it. And the executive producer said, we have an interview with Donald Trump. And I had been traveling all over the country all week long and only had one day at home when I would tape the program and do the Sunday news. And I said, I don’t want to interview him. Why are we interviewing him? He’s just a tabloid bloviator. And he. He said, look, we have to fill the program. But why would that? Why don’t we fill it with something else? And he said, it’s easy. Please go do it. He’s already agreed. And there I was. At the time, I didn’t see the value of it. But once again, they said, well, Barbara Walters interviewed her — him, why don’t you? You know, and I just didn’t enjoy groveling for these sort of celebrity interviews. I — and neither did the men. The men thought it was beneath them.

ISAACSON: Tell me about generation Connie.

CHUNG: It was the most wonderful revelation for me that I ever could have imagined. A young woman named Connie Wong called and e-mailed me, and she told me that I — she was named after me, and I couldn’t believe it. So, I talked to her on the phone and she found, yes. She said, she had — her parents had asked her what name would you like to have? You have to have an American name. And she knew only what she saw on television. She said, Connie or Elma. And thankfully, they chose Connie. UC Berkeley, and she was in the cafeteria and someone said, Connie, Connie Wong, and she turned around, because there’s so many Asians at UC Berkeley, half the cafeteria turned around. She discovered the phenomenon of the generation of Connie’s. She wrote it for the Sunday, New York Times opinion section, and it was the most beautifully written story of how Asian parents named their baby daughters, Connie, after me, I couldn’t imagine. I had no idea that this was going on. I was just doing my job, Walter. I was going day by day, trying to climb my way up the ladder and I had no idea who was on the other side of the camera watching. I came to the stark realization that my husband was right, he said, I was the Jackie Robinson of news. And now, I think I finally can get my arms around the idea and kind of believe that my husband was right for the first time.

ISAACSON: Connie Chung, thank you so much for joining us.

CHUNG: Thank you, Walter.