Katie Couric says she no longer has relationship with Matt Lauer
Journalist Katie Couric, who this week is releasing her new memoir, "Going There," confirmed she no longer has a relationship with former "Today" show colleague Matt Lauer in an appearance on "The View" Monday and discussed her reaction to the allegations made about the former TV host.
In November 2017, the disgraced "Today" show anchor was fired after NBC said a colleague accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace. Lauer has said that he never assaulted anyone or forced anyone to have sex.
Out of Couric's 15 years on the morning news show, she spent nine years co-anchoring alongside Lauer. On Monday, she shared her view of the story on "The View."
She said that while "there were a lot of whispers about a lot of people" and that was "part of the ether," Couric added it wasn't in her "world" because she was caring for her first husband Jay Monahan -- who died of colon cancer in 1998 -- and two children.
"I kind of wanted to keep away from all the rumor mills and the gossip," she said.
When allegations came out against her former co-anchor in 2017, she told "The View" that it was "stunning" and "crushingly disappointing" to hear the news. "Matt, he was ... considered a really good person and a good guy, and obviously had this very dark side where he was callous and reckless and worse to some of the women with whom he worked and who worked for him," Couric said.
When "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin asked Couric if she still has a relationship with Lauer, she responded, "I don't."
While writing her memoir, Couric was told by Stanford University sociologist and gender studies professor Marianne Cooper that permissive environments could give way to more severe transgressions. Couric said that often times "there was a permissive environment" in workplaces during the '90s.
Though Couric says she was never directly approached by anyone about Lauer's alleged misconduct at the time, she said there's been "many times" she's helped or advised women who were in "uncomfortable situations" and "gone to bat for them," and said she "would have done the same thing" had she known about the sexual assault allegations against Lauer while working on the "Today" show.
"I think we've all learned a lot in processing the Me Too movement about what does it mean to have a consensual relationship, how really you can't if someone is responsible for your financial fate and your professional job security and understanding power dynamics," Couric said.
"I just hope it's a very different environment in many of these workplaces than it was in the '90s and early 2000s," she added.
Couric began her journalism career in 1980, when the industry was largely dominated by men. In her memoir "Going There," she writes about how men would quickly brush her off as she was starting out. She told "The View" co-hosts about two occasions early in her career when men made comments about her breasts at the workplace.
"This is something that you think of from 'Mad Men,' not in 1980," Couric said.
The View’s original podcast series "Behind the Table" is available for free on major listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, Audacy and the ABC News app.
