Connie Chung says booze and bawdy jokes helped her break into journalism's boys club

Veteran TV news anchor Connie Chung jokes that part of her success can be attributed to booze and bawdy humor. That's because when she was first starting out, she was often the only woman among the all-male press corps.

On the road covering the 1972 presidential campaign, Chung tended to retreat to her hotel room at night. She thought she was being responsible by prepping for the next day— then she noticed the male reporters were getting scoops that she was missing.

"It suddenly dawned on me they were saucing up the campaign manager and everyone who worked for the candidate, and letting them spill the beans," Chung says.

Chung began to go down to the bar at night, where, she says, drinking and jokes helped her to break into the press corps "boys club."

"Therein lies a great way to learn how to be a reporter," she says. "I don't recommend it by any means. But at the time, I just had to find a way."

In her new memoir, Connie, Chung opens up about the decades she spent covering the news, her marriage to tabloid talk-show host Maury Povich and the prominent figures who acted inappropriately with her — including President Jimmy Carter, who, she says, pressed his knee against hers suggestively at a black-tie dinner.

In 1993, when Chung was named co-anchor of CBS Evening News, she became the first Asian American — and second woman — to have the position. She says it was "pretty clear" that veteran newsman Dan Rather didn't want her there.

"I don't blame him totally, because he had owned Walter Cronkite's chair for many years and had to move over a few inches to make room for me," she says. "And I do believe that had I been another man, had I been an animal, had I been a plant … he would not have wanted anyone to share that seat with him."

Throughout her career, Chung was often one of the few Asian American newscasters on television. In 2020, Chung realized the impact she'd had on the community when a writer named Connie Wong reached out, telling her about a generation of immigrants who had named their baby girls after her.

"There were these ... babies who were actually named 'Connie Chung' and then their last name," Chung says. "Honestly, I can't really embrace how gargantuan it is. It is profound."

Interview highlights

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On covering the O.J. Simpson trial — even though she didn't want to

The men could not be pushed into that direction. CBS News, Dan Rather, who was my co-anchor, wouldn't touch it. And 60 Minutes, it was all men at the time and they wouldn't touch it. So they wanted nothing to do with O.J. Simpson. And frankly, I didn't either. But the management would come to me and say, "Barbara Walters is getting X, Diane Sawyer is getting Y and Katie Couric is getting Z. You have to do this for the team." I said, "I don't want to, I don't see the value in it. It's tabloid."

I have a lot of regrets, but that is one of the biggest ones, of being the good girl, … being told what to do. Resisting, but never being able to put my foot down and say, "I am not doing it. Go find somebody else."

On learning how to stake out a story from Barbara Walters

She picked up the phone herself. She wrote a letter. She faxed. She called. She nudged. She would say, "Let's have lunch." And I would call it, “Being Barbara’d.’

Barbara and I had a lot in common. She was clearly the pioneer and paved our way. But she was the breadwinner in her family because her father's nightclubs tanked and she had to take care of her mother and her father, support her mother and her father and her disabled sister. I was the breadwinner in my family as well for my mother and father. I supported them till the day they died. From about 25 on, I was their parent. We both co-anchored with someone who despised us, a man. We were both fired after two years. We both adopted a child. We both married nice Jewish boys — although I think Barbara married maybe two or three. But I admired Barbara because she paved our way.

On her marriage to Maury Povich

I'm still wondering how come we are a perfect match, because we are so different. But the public personas belie what is really behind our door. ... He's a very down-to-earth, realistic guy. What belies his public persona is that he is very much a voracious reader. He's a political buff. He's a history buff. He could run circles around these pseudo-intellectuals who do interviews with important people. And I always say that to him: "Why don't you do a serious talk show? ...You're so smart and people would know how smart you are." And he says, "As long as you know that, I'm fine." And I thought, my goodness! What a guy.

On being anti-social

Maury and I stay home all the time. We’re so boring. If someone asks us to go have dinner, we have to think about it for a few months. … I'm the one who's even more anti-social in the sense that. I want to wash my face and take off my makeup and look scary. And I don't want anybody else seeing me looking scary.

On the state of TV news today

When I see [a bad] interview on television, I want to throw my shoe at it if somebody isn't asking the question, the next question that I would ask. ... I miss that that — the interviews and being able to dig deeper, but I also miss the joy of going after a story that's worthy. And I know it sounds really old-fashioned, but if I can change a government wrong or a change an attitude regarding social ills or whatever, something like that, I think it's so gratifying.

On why she wrote her memoir

I came across a letter from my father, and he had written it when I had already begun in the news business. … My parents were born in 1909 [and] in 1911, in old China, pre-communist China. They grew up with very traditional parents. My mother's feet were bound. Their marriage was arranged when she was only 12 and he was 14. They were married at 17 and 19. ... They had 10 — if you can believe it — children. I was the 10th, the only one born in the United States. They had nine children in China, five of whom died as infants. Three of those infants who died were boys. ...

So they raised five very ballsy women. And I have to say that they all could have been CEOs or had different lives had they grown up in a different era. But ... my father gave me this mission. He said, "Maybe you can carry on the name Chung. Tell everybody how we came to the United States," meaning him and my four older sisters and my mother.

Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.

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