‘Connie’ Breaks a Story: Her Own

Chung’s memoir, “Connie,” comes out Sept. 17.

THE FIRST THING Connie Chung ’69 will tell you these days is that she’s 3 inches shorter than she used to be.

It’s a little ironic, considering she’s never shrunk from anything. Not when she was a 25-year-old reporter covering Watergate, coming face to face with President Richard Nixon as he tried to dodge the media while evidence mounted against him. Not when people told her she “slanted the news” or produced “yellow journalism” because she was Asian American. Not when a sports reporter asked her on air, “When is my laundry going to be done, Connie?”

“My M.O. was to throw it at them before they threw it at me,” she says. “I would tell a racist joke because I could tell it was coming, or tell a sexist joke to a man to throw them off. I don’t recommend it to anyone, but I had to find a way to navigate the overwhelmingly white male settings.”

The groundbreaking journalist, who became the first Asian American and second woman to anchor an evening news program, details it all in a new memoir out Tuesday, titled “Connie.” Nearly a decade in the making, the book reveals for the first time how Chung experienced the highs and lows of her long career that spanned every major news network.

“It’s a delicate balance,” she says of the writing process, which forced her to exhume and reexamine some painful memories. “I felt like, ‘I’m not allowed to tell how I feel.’ I didn’t want anyone seeing me as some kind of crybaby.”

Largely out of the spotlight for the last two decades, she evokes my Asian aunties as she walks into her publisher’s office in New York City, looking up from her visor to give me a warm hug. Chatty and full of self-deprecating quips, she seems far removed from her days on camera, interviewing world leaders and covering national tragedies. She squeals with delight when a photo of my young girls pops on my phone’s lock screen.

But the strength and determination that got her to the top of the cutthroat television news business, decades before the #MeToo reckoning and Stop Asian Hate campaign, are still inside her—and that’s the story she’s now ready to share.

“It’s easy to tell the truth,” she says, about those who stood in her way. “The question is, Do I throw them under the bus? Or gently place them in the line of traffic?”

Chung was elected “Freshman Queen” by her UMD peers, as shown in the 1966 “Terrapin” yearbook.

Then she had a chance encounter with U.S. Rep. Seymour Halpern of New York while taking a friend on a tour of the Capitol. He offered a card; she dialed the number for a summer job and wound up writing press releases and briefing papers.

“I saw members of Congress like rock stars,” she says. “It was like seeing Springsteen or Bon Jovi.”

Chung switched to journalism and stayed an extra year to finish her degree, writing for The Diamondback and reporting for WMUC radio. She credits one of her UMD professors for telling her to start searching early for a job in TV.

She pitched herself at local stations in January, finally landing a gig as a part-time “copy boy” at WTTG-TV Channel 5. But after she graduated, the only job that management offered her was newsroom secretary. She took it, confident that all she needed was a foot in the door.

Chung, then a young reporter for CBS, stands among a crowd of mostly white men after a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Watergate. (Photo by Dev O'Neill, courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives photography office)

IN 2020, a photo of young Chung (right) went viral on social media. She’s facing the camera, looking tired and exasperated among a sea of white men after a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Watergate.

Journalist Marian Wang’s Twitter post declared it a “mood,” and commenters said they couldn’t imagine “the amount of B.S. she put up with” and that “all women know what she’s thinking.”

What Chung felt was this: She was thrilled to be covering the scandal as a young reporter—but she always felt the pressure to “give 200%” and prove herself in a male-dominated industry.

The networks had hired no women until they were forced to do so after the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed sex discrimination, says Merrill College Professor Emerita Maurine Beasley, a journalism historian. “They were afraid of getting sued.”

But the men weren’t thrilled to have women in their midst. To navigate the countless “he either wants to f*ck you or f*ck you over” situations—like when presidential candidate Sen. George McGovern tried to kiss her in a deserted hallway—Chung writes that she relied on her quick wit.

“I had to be as strong and tough as the next guy,” she says. “I lowered my voice. I had swagger and false bravado—and a potty mouth.”

When she was thrust into the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, she chased key figures as they left for work before dawn, accosted others for a soundbite on their way to church and even cold-called those on his infamous “enemies list” at 3 a.m.

Her relentlessness caught the attention of her role model, iconic CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who sent her positive notes through interoffice mail. He was “just plain nice,” she writes, and his encouragement pushed her to keep going.

Hours before Nixon’s resignation, Chung got exclusive insight into the outgoing president’s mood from his top aide, which led to her first on-air appearance with future co-anchor Dan Rather. He was magnanimous and friendly then, but their relationship soured as she climbed the ranks.

Tonya Harding abruptly ended her 1994 interview with Chung over questions on what she knew about the attack a month earlier on fellow ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)

She decamped to L.A. post-Watergate, anchoring for seven years before moving to NBC headquarters in New York. There, she hosted an early-morning show and contributed to the evening news. She resented being assigned salacious stories on weight loss, sex and celebrities by the NBC “male brigade,” so she returned to CBS in 1989.

As the host of “Face to Face with Connie Chung,” a weekly newsmagazine, she secured major interviews, including with the ship captain involved in the Exxon Valdez spill, and reported on the dangers of silicone breast implants, which led the Food and Drug Administration to ban their use until more stringent regulations were implemented.

Chung with co-anchor Dan Rather during her two-year run on the “CBS Evening News,” where she became the first Asian American and second woman to hold a nightly news anchor spot. (Photo by Tony Esparza/CBS via Getty Images)

Then, as ratings dropped for the Rather-led “CBS Evening News,” she was hired as co-anchor in May 1993, becoming the first Asian American to hold the coveted spot. He was condescending from the start, she writes, telling her during their initial sit-down she would have to “start reading the newspaper.” She still found success, such as interviewing Chinese Premier Li Peng on the fifth anniversary of the government crackdown in Tiananmen Square. But when she anchored the Oklahoma City bombing coverage while Rather was on vacation, he seethed, telling The New York Times “it was like trying to swallow barbed-wire-wrapped ball bearings.”

By April 1995, she writes, Rather delivered an ultimatum to CBS President Peter Lund, and Chung was out. (Rather denied it, telling The Washington Post that “Nobody has heard a critical comment from me about Connie” and that her removal “came as a surprise to us.”)

She got the call from her agent just minutes before going on air, but she composed herself and delivered the news.

“I was devastated,” she says. “But they knew me better than I knew me. They figured I wasn’t going to be a maniac, even though I was on live TV, and they were right.”

Photo by Judie Burstein/Zuma Wire via Alamy

CLOSE-UP ON COUPLE’S SUPPORT
Chung is grateful for the lessons she learned at UMD’s journalism school—and UMD is grateful for her and husband Maury Povich’s longtime support. She was a co-chair of UMD’s “Great Expectations” fundraising campaign and has funded a scholarship in her name; he and his siblings helped establish the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, named for his father and late Washington Post columnist, as well as the George Solomon Endowed Chair in Sports Journalism.

Photo courtesy of CBS

MAGIC JOHNSON (1991)
It was a shock when the NBA superstar announced he was retiring from the Los Angeles Lakers because he tested positive for HIV at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Chung, who had become friendly with him during her time as an anchor in L.A., camped out at his agent’s office until he acquiesced, and she secured the first interview after his diagnosis. “Magic was honest and open, answering every uncomfortable question, (including) how he’d told his wife, Cookie, who was pregnant with their first child,” Chung writes.

Photo courtesy of CSPAN

KATHLEEN GINGRICH (1995)
The sit-down with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s mother, in which she faux-whispered to Chung her son’s thoughts on then-first lady Hillary Clinton—“She’s a bitch”—just about “incinerated my career,” Chung writes. The blowback was immediate, with him accusing Chung of tricking a “nice simple woman” and critics calling her a “predator.”

Photo courtesy of CBS

GARY CONDIT (2001)
When D.C. intern Chandra Levy went missing, all eyes quickly went to U.S. Rep. Gary Condit of California, who was rumored to have had an affair with her. Chung got the exclusive, though the congressman remained tight-lipped about their relationship and denied involvement with her disappearance. (Her remains were found a year later; the murder remains unsolved.) Disney President Bob Iger, owner of ABC, emailed Chung to say she was “tough, focused, relentless, tenacious, and even charming!” It became the highest-rated news program on any network that year, with 24 million viewers.