What Did NBC Know And When Did They Know It?

People in and outside NBC are raising questions about the network’s assertion that it had never received complaints about fired Today show co-anchor Matt Lauer before Monday, pointing to shifting language in the network’s own statements about the fired star.

The initial Wednesday morning memo on Lauer’s firing, signed by NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack, referred to a woman who had come forward to complain about Lauer on Monday night, saying that it was “the first complaint about his behavior in the over twenty years he’s been at NBC News.”

NBC’s second statement, released later Wednesday, said, “We can say unequivocally that, prior to Monday night, current NBC News management was never made aware of any complaints about Matt Lauer’s conduct.”

According to Politico, employees at NBC News especially noted the wording shift from “in 20 years” to “current NBC News management,” according to a network staffer. Lack’s current tenure at NBC News began in 2015, though he had previously headed the news division from 1993 to 2001. The tweak raised questions over whether NBC brass was suggesting that past executives may have heard of inappropriate behavior.

At least one, CNN president and former “Today” executive producer Jeff Zucker, addressed the issue on Thursday. At Business Insider’s Ignition conference, he denied any knowledge of bad behavior by Lauer.

"What’s missing in coverage of most media scandals, sex harassment or otherwise, is a willingness to confront systemic causes that led to the scandal, including the culpability of management in allowing scandals to take place," Mark Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the University of Maryland and a former news executive at NBC, CNN and ABC told USAToday.