NBCUniversal just let NBC News off the hook, announcing in a report released Wednesday that an internal investigation found “no evidence indicating that any NBC News or Today Show leadership, News HR or others in positions of authority in the News Division received any complaints” about Matt Lauer’s workplace misconduct before late last November.
Note the wording: their investigation found no evidence company leaders “received” any complaints.
The question still remains (at least publicly) as to whether any of those people were made aware of allegations about Lauer through channels outside the formal complaint process. And the report leaves that door open.
[Opinion: Turns out viewers really like ‘Today’ without Matt Lauer]
Investigators interviewed sixty-eight people, including the current NBC News leadership team and members of the HR and communications staff, in addition to Today Show staffers. Former NBC News leaders, including HR officials, were questioned too.
“Most witnesses interviewed stated that they had heard or read rumors about Lauer’s personal life, including tabloid stories about the troubled state of his marriage and the possibility of extramarital affairs,” investigators note, “but those witnesses believed, with limited exceptions, that the rumored extramarital affairs were with women outside of the Company.”
Who were those “limited exceptions,” and were any of them in management or HR?
“Two of the four complainants who came forward said that they believe former NBC News or Today Show leadership knew or must have known about Lauer’s alleged inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,” the report notes later.
And here’s the most telling excerpt from the entire document:
It may be true that nobody ever formally complained about this behavior to HR and management (though I doubt it). But it’s hard to believe Lauer’s apparent reputation for “openly engag[ing] in sexually-oriented banter in the workplace” never made its way to anyone in a leadership position through less formal channels. He worked at NBC News for almost three decades, and spent 20 years as a leading anchor. Nobody ever overheard him? In meetings? On set?
In fairness, the report acknowledges NBC News may have failed to create the kind of environment where women felt comfortable raising concerns to human resources officials, citing “a lack of familiarity with News HR representatives; a fear of retaliation; a belief that complaints cannot or will not be kept confidential; and a lack of a private environment in which to raise issues.”
But the notion that Lauer, for all his years at the network, had a reputation among everyone but management and HR is so absurd as to be laughable. Yes, people deliberately avoid gossip and jokes in front of superiors and HR representatives, but given the years Lauer spent at the network, and the apparent strength of this reputation, it’s more likely that NBC News leaders, at best, looked the other way when they overheard a questionable joke or became aware of negative gossip, hesitant to actively ask questions of a valuable anchor.
So it’s possible there’s no evidence anyone ever technically submitted a formal complaint. But somewhere along the lines, somebody must have known something they should have been pursued further.
The #MeToo lesson for NBC— and other workplaces with dramatic power imbalances— is to take action even in the absence of a formal complaint, rather than allowing an offender’s misconduct to fester for years, protecting their status while enabling their behavior.
