How Connie Chung Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Personal: 'I Was Uncomfortable, Frankly'

Connie Chung doesn’t like getting personal. “I was uncomfortable, frankly,” the 78-year-old news veteran tells TVNewser with a resigned smile while describing the "torturous" process of turning her life into a literal open book—specifically the new autobiography, Connie: A Memoir. It’s no surprise, then, that her first draft stuck to the “just the facts” approach Chung favors as a pioneering TV journalist whose career has spanned decades—and all three broadcast networks. But that’s not the version of her life that her editor wanted to read. “She told me, ‘You have to tell me how you feel,’” Chung recalls. Initially resistant to that note, she soon hit upon a solution that comedians have been employing for decades: using a well-timed, well-written joke to defuse even the most agonizing moments. “I tried not to wallow in the uncomfortable parts of my life,” Chung says of how she approached the dreaded rewriting process. “When I dealt with them with humor, they didn’t seem so earth-shattering.” With humor equipped in her arsenal, Chung soon found herself able to write about moments from her past she’d never disclosed before. Case in point: While covering George McGovern’s long shot presidential campaign in 1972—her first major assignment for CBS News—she fended off a clumsy kiss from the candidate after joining him for an otherwise “quiet, uneventful” dinner with Hollywood supporters Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Chung covering Washington, D.C. in the 1970s “I was shocked. I stepped back,” Chung writes in the book. “He quickly took the cue and stepped back too. It was not an aggressive act. Just a surprising one.” Chung confirms she’d never told that story publicly before committing it to the page. And she reveals she recently met another woman who claimed that McGovern propositioned her years later. (McGovern died in 2012.) “There’s a long history of presidents and presidential candidates forgetting that they are normal human beings, but then we’re all reminded that they are,” Chung says of McGovern's act of unwanted attention, pointing to John F. Kennedy, Gary Hart, and Bill Clinton as other examples. “These men believe they have power over women—power harassment I think it would be called.” [Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted before Donald Trump was re-elected to the White House in November. In 2023, the president-elect was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming author E. Jean Carroll.] Chung’s encounter with McGovern was one of the more extreme examples of how her gender caused her to stick out “like a sore thumb” from the male-dominated press corps at the time. “When you have an aardvark on the plane or the bus, you tend to look at it a little differently than all the lions, tigers, and bears,” she says, once again demonstrating her flair for humor. “I couldn’t help but draw attention, because the other reporters just didn’t know what to do with me.” Chung during her second stint at CBS News To defuse the sense of exoticism that followed her on the campaign trail, Chung remembers that she embraced being “one of the boys,” spiritedly competing with her rivals for scoops. “I wanted to be accepted into the club,” she says. “In my head, the only way to do it was to perceive myself as a guy and then I could believe in myself—and maybe they’d believe it, too.” By the end of Chung's time covering the McGovern campaign, many colleagues believed in her. She swiftly graduated from the road to the anchor’s chair, first on CBS’ West Coast flagship station in Los Angeles followed by an NBC morning show, a decade-long return stint at CBS and a late ‘90s run at ABC. During that time, though, she watched as the sports-like competitiveness of the ‘70s gave way to a more cutthroat atmosphere driven primarily by the bottom line. “The networks became corporations that were only concerned about money,” she observes with all-to-apparent regret. “Journalism was lost in the process.” In her memoir, Chung recounts how that shift profoundly impacted the relationships between high-profile journalists. After arriving at ABC, for example, she describes being made an unwitting participant in a ratings-driven feud between the network’s star hosts, Diane Sawyer and the late Barbara Walters, with Sawyer even claiming that Walters would say negative things about Chung behind her back. “They were wasting energy battling each other instead of trying to find the story,” Chung says. “They were like Velcro—it was hard to pull away. And then I’d get angry at myself for being sucked into that unhealthy competition! Competition has always been a hallmark of journalism, but a lot is lost when we forget about accuracy and truth.” In Chung's eyes, that trend only continued as the rise of cable news steadily blurred the line between reporting and opinion, with the latter often veering into the kind of personal storytelling that she dislikes. “I don’t care what they think—do you?” Chung says, chuckling. “As a reader and as a watcher of television, I often have a hard time finding the truth.” Chung at the Asian Hall of Fame Centennial Medal Ceremony The truth of Chung's career is that she kicked in doors that allowed subsequent generations of Asian American journalists to find opportunities major network newsrooms. In 2016, she was inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame and received the organization's Centennial Medal for Lifetime Achievement this past September. "I don't take these awards lightly," Chung says of her most recent honor. "I'm always and extremely flattered when they come along." Naturally, she can't resist tagging that earnest sentiment with a joke. "I sometimes feel as if I'm attending my own funeral," Chung says slyly about attending events where she's the honoree. "I told my husband [Maury Povich] the other day that I think I was happier when I thought I was chopped liver!"

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How Connie Chung Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Personal: 'I Was Uncomfortable, Frankly'

The veteran journalist shares never-before-told stories in a new memoir

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