Connie Chung

Born on August 20, 1946, Connie Chung, was one of the first few women to co-anchor a major network’s national news broadcast. Born and raised in Washington D.C., her career as an anchor and reporter for several U.S. television news networks began in the 1970’s, but her main focus in news was in the 1990’s. Connie Chung began her career in the early 1970’s as Washington D.C. correspondent for CBS Evening News alongside Walter Cronkite. After a short period of time, Connie moved to Los Angeles, California where she anchored for KCBS, which was the second largest local market for news. Shortly after her stay in California, she moved and changed to anchor for the NBC, where she got her first program anchor titled, NBC News at Sunrise. After three years with NBC, she went back to CBS where she earned the title of being the second woman to co-anchor a major network’s national news broadcast, where Barbara Walters was the first with ABC in 1976. Besides hosting CBS Evening News, she also held side-project shows at ABC titled, Eye to Eye with Connie Chung as well as, Face to Face with Connie Chung. Although her side projects were ultimately unsuccessful in the end, her later change in co-hosting the Monday edition of 20/20 in 1998 turned out to be her trademark. Overall, Connie Chung’s career wasn’t too outstanding, but it wasn’t something to belittle either. Within Connie Chung’s career as a news reporter, she was generally seen as gentle and unaggressive with her questions. However, her mistake in the Oklahoma City bombing interview where she asked a local Oklahoma City Fire Department spokesman, “Can the Oklahoma City Fire Department handle this?” Many viewer thought that her question was very unprofessional and heartless, because of the tone she used while asking the question, which viewers believed she held the Asian stereotypical trait of being emotionless and only focused on her work. With thousands and calls and local letter from residents of Oklahoma City sent to complain about her interviewing skills, Connie Chung was laid off from her nation news position.

As an Asian American, Connie Chung maintained a very professional image and was never commented by fellow coworkers of showing any signs of the Orient, or held traditional Asian values. Through her accomplishment in being not only one of the first female nation news broadcast co-anchor, but an Asian American as well, her professionalism proved to the American masses that Asians were able to do just as good as a job as her Caucasian counterparts.