Connie Chung has been a groundbreaker in TV news. She was the first Asian American and the second woman to be a nightly news anchor at a major American TV network. For three decades, she set in the anchor chair at NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN.
Chung says she is concerned about the state of journalism today.
“I want our democracy to survive and I believe in the First Amendment. I believe in us, in journalism, you, me, and the rest of us in journalism to deliver the facts and not deliver opinion. I can form my own opinion, and I don't want to hear from opinionists in the media,” Chung said.
Chung was in Northeast Ohio this week, sharing some of her life stories and accomplishments and talking about her new book – “Connie: a Memoir.”
A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Chung also says she’s “horrified” with the trends around the country to rollback diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
“I lose sleep on it because I worry about all the back steps that women and minorities have taken,” Chung said. “You got to let women and minorities experience the same wonderful democracy that we have in these new United States. I got my job really because of all of that. I would not have had my career.”
One of Chung’s stops in Northeast Ohio was for a discussion Wednesday at the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Snow Branch in Parma. Illustrating her fight for racial representation in the news industry, Chung started the presentation with a photo from 1971 of Richard Nixon’s oval office full of reporters – most of them white and all of them men, except for her.
“Growing up, I didn't get to see a lot of Asian Americans on TV," said Vera Boggs, a Chinese American who grew up in Cuyahoga County and was in the audience for the event at the library. "To see her in a national platform was just great, especially during a time when we didn't really have that many choices beyond just the basic TV stations".
Chung said the appreciation she gets from Asian Americans in places where the Asian population is low - like Cuyahoga County, where people of Asian descent make up about 3% of the population - is a personal reminder of her success working to improve representation of women and racial minorities in media.
“I thought maybe I wasn’t you know, just a bum, just another person on the reporting staff. Maybe I did accomplish something. And that certainly was a signal to me that I done good,” Chung said. “At any rate, I saw a lot of Asians and actually it gave me a lot a surprise. So, the 3% must have come out.”
Chung's events in Northeast Ohio also included a Thursday evening conversation at University of Akron's E.J. Thomas Hall.
