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Amanpour
Interview with University of California, Berkeley Professor of Business and Council of Economic Advisers Former Chair Laura D. Tyson; Interview with "Lee" Actress Kate Winslet; Interview with "Connie: A Memoir" Author Connie Chung. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired October 08, 2024 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: So, she's got to now travel to another state. God help her that
she has some extra money to pay for that plane ticket.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The dollars and cents of reproductive rights. Top economist Laura Tyson tells me how supporting women is the key to prosperity.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATE WINSLET, ACTRESS, "LEE": I've never read reviews. I've never been motivated by the wrong thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- leading actress Kate Winslet on blocking out the noise and transforming into a dogged war reporter for her new film, "Lee."
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONNIE CHUNG, AUTHOR, "CONNIE: A MEMOIR": I just felt like if I could talk trash the way the men talked trash, then maybe I could be one of the boys.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- the legendary Connie Chung, the pioneering newswoman talks to Walter Isaacson about making her name in the all-male industry that was
network news.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. It is crunch time for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, four weeks until
Election Day. Americans are on the verge of making one of the most important decisions of theirs and all of our times. And as with most
elections, the economy's issue number one for voters, but also in focus like never before are reproductive rights after Roe versus Wade was
overturned in 2022.
On the surface, these two issues may not seem related, but economist Laura Tyson argues that they are actually linked. Tyson, who advised President
Clinton, as the first female head of the Council of Economic Advisers, is now a professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and she's
joining me now from there. Laura Tyson, welcome to the program.
LAURA D. TYSON, PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY AND FORMER CHAIR, COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: It's a wonderful pleasure
to be with you, Christiane. Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So, you are one of Kamala Harris', I don't know, kitchen cabinet of economic advisers right now. And you have written about the issue that
I've just mentioned, how reproductive rights and freedom actually is intrinsically linked to prosperity.
So, explain to us why? Because on the surface, they may seem too -- one's a cultural issue, one's a, you know, woman's issue, the other is a huge
economic issue.
TYSON: There are numerous studies over many, many years that have documented the freedom to choose reproductive rights, the freedom to choose
as a key Cornerstone really of women's economic freedom, because what we're talking about here is freedom to choose your education path, freedom to
choose your career path, freedom to balance your family with your professional commitments, your care commitments with your professional
commitments.
And somehow these links, very obvious to women, seem to be totally lost in discussions by a lot of the economic advisers about the economy. So, I
decided I wanted to write this piece to really document all of the ways in which reproductive rights, abortion rights, the freedom to choose, freedom
to decide what to do with your body really affect the economy.
And as I said, there have been numerous studies over many years. In fact, there was a very powerful amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court at
the timing of the Dobbs decision, where a lot of these effects were laid out. A lot of the economic implications of taking away the right that was
available in Roe. So, I can certainly enumerate them. And --
AMANPOUR: Yes, I wanted to give you -- give us a couple of examples of the -- literally, the dollars and cents.
TYSON: OK. So, the dollars and cents here, to me, start with educational advancement. You know, I'm going to just do a personal anecdote here. When
I was a PhD. student in MIT, many, many, many years ago now, I was advised by my graduate advisers, who are all men, do not have a child until you get
tenure.
[13:05:00]
You see this notion of you balance your profession with your family. You have to plan. You have to plan. And what we've seen is, you know, women
have a vastly increased their educational attainment levels more. There -- women account for a larger share of secondary education, tertiary education
than men do.
They -- we also know, absolutely documented, not just in the U.S. but around the world, that there is a motherhood penalty professionally, and
the motherhood penalty comes from the fact, the reality, that when a woman has a child, even if she's the high earner in her family, she is more
likely to drop out of the labor force, to take leave from the labor force. And when she goes back, she's not able to recoup or catch up on the wages
and the time that she gave up for childcare.
So, basically, the motherhood penalty is just so well documented, and women kind of know it. So, when they're trying to plan a profession, career,
education, and a child, they want to have the reproductive freedom to make that choice.
AMANPOUR: So, you're arguing that it's not just an individual's prosperity and advancement that can be enhanced by being able to have that choice and
that planning ability, but that it spreads to the community economic health, the -- I don't know, the national economic health.
So, I guess I want to ask you, are there any examples of states in the United States, since 2022 and the reversal of Roe versus Wade, that show an
economic lag or some kind of effect on women, children, and the state of economic health in states that are much more strict on this and
restrictive?
TYSON: Well, I heard your -- I heard the, what was said before by Vice President Harris, Candidate Harris, you know, income and education level,
if a woman in a highly restrictive state like Texas is a graduate student in need of an abortion, she will go to another state. So, basically, I
think that, right now, you have a situation.
So, the problem here is that this is much more burdensome for poor women. So, a lot of the abortion restrictions occur in the states where the
percentage of women in poverty is higher, the percentage of children in poverty is higher, the likelihood that a mother -- a single mother living
in poverty, if she cannot get an abortion will have another child living in poverty. Those are the ways it shows up.
The incidence of this is quite uneven and it is lower income women in poor states that are the most restrictive that cannot find a way to get an
abortion. We have, still in the United States, several states that allow that, but the economic effects there are who can afford to do that, who can
even have the knowledge to do that? So, I would -- that's how I would answer that question.
AMANPOUR: So --
TYSON: So, let me -- go ahead.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Let me -- I just want to ask you a couple of issues, because it's not just about that particular issue. Kamala Harris -- I mean,
obviously, she's really being the administration's point person even before becoming the candidate, on all of these issues around Roe versus Wade. But
she also, for her economic policy, wants to increase the child tax credit, increase spending on child care and on elder care, and to encourage home
ownership and new housing construction.
But those -- the previous ones, the first three, again, go directly to women and their role in the economy because they disproportionately, right,
bear the burden of child and elder care.
TYSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I basically make the point in what I've written that not only are the red states or the senators from red states,
the people who are most aggressive on very restrictive abortion. Let's look at their positions on those kinds of issues.
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They are -- have historically backed any paid family leave. They have historically -- they allowed for a temporary increase in the expansion of
the child tax credit during COVID, but they took it away immediately. When it was proposed that they consider it, again, basically Trump, in another
example, said to the Republicans, don't do this now because you're giving the Democrats a win. Just like he said that on the immigration restriction
law. Don't give it -- I -- he's now saying things like, yes, I think we should have a child care tax credit or some kind of care provision, but I
don't want it -- I don't want a child tax credit in a Democratic Congress right now. I want it to be my win.
So, this is -- another area that these -- the same states, the same governors, the same senators when in vitro fertilization came up, here's a
real problem for them. According to Project 2025, which informs many of their thinking, two things are true. Number one, we can no longer have
medication induced abortion. So, those women who might live in a state that allows it, but actually are poor, they won't be able to get the medication.
OK. So, if -- that's a Project 2025.
Another Project 2025 says that believes in fetal personhood. That means -- so, I actually think that this issue will extend to IVF. It'll extend to
all forms of abortion, including medical abortion.
And let me say that from the point of view of the community, I think that what we have here is a situation where, as I said, it's hardest on poor
women. And if you look at these states, you will see that women are more likely to be ill, their children are more likely to die in their first year
of birth. All of these things that actually are for the community. They're not just on the individual.
As far as the macroeconomy is concerned, I would say the main influence here is women's labor force participation rates. We know that if you look
at male labor force participation rates in the U.S., they've been on a decline for the past 35 years. Women's labor force participation rates went
up and then kind of stabilized. And it's too early to see whether this abortion restriction will have an effect, OK? But we know that, again,
women will have to leave the labor force. That's -- we see that. We know that.
AMANPOUR: OK. Laura, I got to ask you a question. Because I want you -- just try to, you know, broaden out to the macroeconomy. And I need to ask
you this, because a new study comparing Harris and Trump's economic plans is making news. Apparently, the committee for a response which is a
nonpartisan organization says both candidates' policies will increase the federal deficit, which is already quite considerable. They estimate though
that Trump's will increase it much more like twice as much as Harris.
What do you make of that analysis? And how is -- you know, how -- I mean, I know the federal deficit is like a sacred cow and everybody talks about it.
But, A, the analysis and what does it mean, in fact, in real economic terms for the country?
TYSON: Well, I think you have to -- it is certainly true that the -- I want to start with the fact that there are numerous analysis out there.
This is the most recent one. Every single one of them shows a dramatically larger increase in the deficit over 10 years under Trump than under Harris.
Harris is proposing to try to cover her new programs by a fair higher tax burden on the very wealthy and on corporations.
And she actually has a pay for plan for most of the things that she wants to introduce, most of which are care related. OK. They are care related.
She wants to expand the earn and income tax credit, which as far as the economy is concerned, that is one thing we know does work at putting people
to work. And that is something that the Clinton administration expanded, the Obama administration expanded, we should expand it.
AMANPOUR: OK.
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TYSON: So, I guess I would -- I really come out here, I think, very similar to where Jason Furman, who was the chair of the Council of Economic
Advisers under Obama, what he has basically said here, which is that Trump's budget, Trump's tariffs, Trump's threat to the independence of the
Federal Reserve pose a much greater risk to the U.S. economy, and indeed organizations like Moody and Goldman Sachs are saying, hey, this looks like
if he goes through with these tariff increases and some -- even some of the deportation of labor, we are going to have an economy, which is in
stagflation. We're going to have a recession and we are going to have inflation.
AMANPOUR: OK.
TYSON: Higher prices (INAUDIBLE). So, I think -- and that's the reality. That's the reality
AMANPOUR: All right.
TYSON: One could --
AMANPOUR: But there's another reality as well, and that is the narrative, the latest CNN polls of, you know, likely voters say. And most polls have
been saying this, they trust Trump over Harris to handle the economy. The latest is 49 percent Trump, 35 percent for Harris. So, how do you square
that circle?
TYSON: I don't. I will say one thing about this. We -- people who are thinking back to Trump, the main distinction for them is that prices were
lower. We did not have that bout of inflation that occurred post-COVID in 2021 and 2022. So, basically, people are mainly responding to higher
prices. And related to that, to higher interest rates and the ability to get a home loan or the willingness of people to sell their house if they
actually have a real good low interest loan on it.
So, I think what Harris has said numerous times is, yes, prices are too high. We want to do what we can to bring them down. So, for example, on
prescription drugs, this is really important because the IRA, that Inflation Reduction Act, which was largely a climate act, but it did have
the ability of the government to negotiate on drug prices.
Do you know how important that is? The government is one of the biggest buyers of drugs in the world. We should be able to negotiate with companies
on the price of their drugs. Every other buyer negotiates with drug companies.
So, I do think we have to go after each area. Housing, she has said, OK. yes, housing prices are high, interest rates are coming down, but we have
to do much more to build additional housing units. She's the only one with a detailed plan that most observers, economists, and people in the business
community have said, yes, this is a pretty good plan. With a goal of 3 million additional housing units working with state and local governments.
So, I think she -- what she's done is say, OK. Yes, prices are too high. Let's go brew price by price, area by area, what can we do over time to
bring prices down? But I think that is probably the main reason why voters they -- when they think back to Trump and they say, well, what was good
about that economy versus this economy, I think they would say prices (ph).
AMANPOUR: All right. Yes.
TYSON: But on the other hand, let me just say, because this is really good news. The last several jobs reports, the one from last week, show that --
AMANPOUR: I've got to wrap you now, Laura.
TYSON: All right. Wages are rising faster than prices. Wages are rising faster than prices. That is key.
AMANPOUR: All right. You got that last point in.
TYSON: All right.
AMANPOUR: Laura Tyson, economist and adviser to the Harris campaign. Thank you so much. Now, as the conflict in the Middle East worsens, the world
looks to journalists on the ground to deliver the truth. So, we turn to one photographer who paved the way for war correspondents, but whose story
remains largely untold.
Lee Miller captured the atrocities of the Second World War on her camera, despite facing resistance as a woman in the field. Award winning actress
Kate Winslet is bringing that story back into the spotlight in her new film, "Lee." Here's a clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATE WINSLET, ACTRESS, "LEE": I'm heading to the front.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's not what I thought you were going to say.
WINSLET: Ready to go?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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AMANPOUR: And I recently met and spoke with Winslet in New York about all of this. Here's our conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Kate Winslet, welcome to our program.
WINSLET: Thank you for having me.
AMANPOUR: It is wonderful, for me anyway, and for the general audience, I'm sure, to see you playing one of the most illustrious war correspondents
of the 20th century. What made you choose this character, who really wasn't very well known for what she was really best at?
WINSLET: Well, I think it's probably exactly as you say, she wasn't well known and she wasn't revered, I felt, for the right reasons. I knew who Lee
Miller was, and I was aware of her work as a photographer, and I knew what she looked like. But I found that as I started to really dig into the rest
of her life, the sort of headline description of her was former muse, actually not even the, a former muse and ex-lover of Man Ray, ex-cover
girl, ex-Vogue model. These sort of -- this kind of reductive things that reduced her in a way, reduced her power, infantilized her, sort of stuck
her in a moment in history that she couldn't wait to get away from.
AMANPOUR: Man Ray, of course, for those who don't know, the great surrealist artist of the 20th century. And in fact, it wasn't until after
she died that her son found boxes of her diaries and photos hidden away in the attic. It's almost like she didn't want to tell. She didn't want to let
on. Why do you think that was?
WINSLET: I don't think it's a case of want, I think it's a case of couldn't. I think it was a case of so many people had terrible debilitating
PTSD after World War II, and Lee was no exception to that. In fact, quite the opposite. It re-triggered in her the trauma of something that happened
to her as a child. And I think the level of exposure to such extreme horror as they witnessed during the war. It cracked her open and I think revealed
old wounds that she simply had to do her very best to close.
And part of that was quite literally closing her photographs and prints into boxes, shutting them away, putting them in the attic, and never
speaking of it. And it's absolutely true that Antony Penrose had no idea what his mother had done during World War II until after her death in 1977.
And he found those boxes.
AMANPOUR: And he did write the book on which this film is based. Yes. Which is pretty great tribute from a son, who had a difficult relationship
with his mother.
WINSLET: Yes. So, Lee, because of her trauma and because she got pregnant with him unexpectedly just after the war, she found it extremely hard to be
a mother. She had a dangerous relationship with alcohol. And he has talked about how fractured their relationship was, even describing it as caustic
at times.
I recently heard him say that until he opened those boxes and started to read her articles about the siege of San Marlo and look at those images, he
said, I just thought that she'd been this useless old drunk. And here she was revealed to me as being so much more than I ever could have imagined or
ever could have hoped. And it's been a phenomenal journey for him piecing together who she truly was, but coming to understand why she had been the
way she had been to him as a mother.
AMANPOUR: It's really amazing that we've brought this up so early, because it goes right to the heart of what it is to be a woman and a woman at work,
and a woman who does dangerous things. Let's sort of start a little bit at the beginning, before the very famous picture of her in Hitler's bathtub.
She wanted to go cover the British war effort, and she wasn't allowed, right?
WINSLET: Yes, she was initially -- after she had decided that being a war correspondent for British Vogue in order to convey information to the
female readers of British Vogue, she invented that job. And initially, she was -- yes, she was given the task of going and photographing, as you say,
the women, the pilots, ferrying bombers between bases in the women's quarters at White Waltham, et cetera, et cetera, but she was absolutely
determined to go to the front line. And women were not allowed. They were not.
Even when she got there, as we see in the film, she's told no women in the press briefing. I mean, the utter outrage. And what I loved and still love
and will forever love about Lee is that she led her life with intention and grace, integrity and resilience, redefining femininity, already 80 years
ago, in the way that we live now.
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And this was a woman who not only knew that she had already earned her place at the table, but was determined to sit at the head of it. And that
for me, in terms of a global message about female leadership, is phenomenal and important.
AMANPOUR: And then, she somehow became the first person to break the news of some of these concentration camps, notably Dachau. How did she even get
there?
WINSLET: Lee was phenomenally good at using her charms. She really was. And she leant into the fact that she was a woman and could buddy up with
the guys easily. So, she would chit chat with the G.I.s and she would find information on the inside, and she would just follow her nose.
And the more and more that they were hearing about people going missing and the more that they became aware that no one knew where they had gone to or
had been taken, the hungrier it made Lee to unearth this mystery, this atrocity, this lie and to reveal it to the world.
She kept hearing rumors of something happening down south. And she writes about that and we include words to that effect in our film. And she and
Davey Scherman were always the first in the door at any scoop. And they arrived at Dachau not knowing really anything about what they were about to
see, but knowing that that's where all the millions of missing had allegedly been taken. One of many places, many, many places across Europe
as, of course, we now know. So, many millions of people had been taken to. What had happened to them, of course, they were only about to discover.
AMANPOUR: Through her pictures?
WINSLET: Through her pictures.
AMANPOUR: At one point The most famous picture that basically the world knows about Lee Miller is frankly her in Hitler's bathtub, and it's been
very misrepresented over the years as some kind of, you know, dilettante action, some kind of war trophy, and the clip that we're going to play
shows Davey Scherman, the colleague, setting up the shot of you as Lee Miller in the bathtub.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WINSLET: Davey, come here. Come here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?
WINSLET: Come on. Quick, I need you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For what?
WINSLET: Is it good?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Locked.
WINSLET: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Here?
WINSLET: Yes. Ready?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: For history's sake, tell us why she took that bath. It wasn't just a war trophy. And Hitler was committing suicide or had just committed
suicide in his bunker at that time.
WINSLET: Lee and Davey had not washed or changed their clothes for six weeks and they certainly hadn't touched hot water. And that is a fact. That
is a historical fact. So, it just doesn't surprise me that Lee would think, well, there's no one here, there's a lockable door, there's hot running
water. And I believe, and Tony Penrose shares the same view, that it wouldn't have been until she was in that bath that she realized, hang on a
second, this might just be something I need to do.
AMANPOUR: To wash off the horror?
WINSLET: To wash off the dirt of Dachau, the horror and the evil in Hitler's bathtub. To stamp that mud into his girly lemon-yellow bathmat, as
she herself described it. That's pure -- it's pure Lee. It just doesn't surprise me. Now, I know her as intimately as I do. I can absolutely see
why she would do something like that.
AMANPOUR: We have another clip where Lee has sent these pictures of the concentration camps back to Vogue. You see the sort of Lee cutting them up
in anger because they haven't been printed and she wants to get this story out. We're going to play this clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop. Stop. Stop. They're a historical record.
WINSLET: Well, who cares? Nobody saw them. You didn't print them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I fought for them, Lee. I fought for them. These must be preserved.
WINSLET: What? To sit in a filing cabinet?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The ministry thought they may disturb people.
WINSLET: This happened. This really happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lee. Lee. Lee.
WINSLET: This happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These images will disturb people more than they've already been disturbed. People need to move on.
[13:30:00]
WINSLET: Move on. Move on. This little girl in a death camp. Raped and beaten. How does she move on? How does she move on ever, ever, ever?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, for me, that was an incredible scene, because having covered war myself and sometimes being told you can't show that amount of detail or
that amount of actual horror, it was extraordinary, the reaction that Lee had. Tell me about her and the argument she was having with the editor who
was on her side. I mean, the editor was a big supporter of her. And did those pictures eventually get published and what impact did they have?
WINSLET: So, Lee and Audrey Withers, they actually had a rather exceptional relationship. Their bond crossed over from a boss and an
employee into the territory of very gentle, important female friendship. This really happened, this scene. It's something that actually did take
place.
I met a woman when I was researching the film, who's now in her 90s, who was a 15-year-old secretary at Vogue at the time, and she told me this
story. She said, Kate, I will just tell you something that happened that was rather remarkable. Lee came in one day and she was rather drunk. She
was in a terrible state and she was furious that more of her photographs hadn't been printed in British Vogue. And she started pulling open drawers
and ripping open boxes until she found what she was looking for, her negatives. And she picked up my scissors and she started hacking, hacking
into them.
She -- as though she was trying to cut them out of herself. That's how I read that. And the only way this young girl could get Lee to stop cutting
for fear that she was going to hurt herself, she said, now you look here, Lee Miller, those are my good scissors. You jolly well give them back. And
Lee looked her in the eye and was almost startled by this young girl's firmness. And she stopped and she put the scissors down and she left. And I
have actually held those cut up negatives myself in my hand.
And when I heard that story, I knew it would have to be a part of our film precisely because of that deep metaphor that Lee was so traumatized and so
desperately trying to get rid of these things that she had seen like so many people. Lee felt completely betrayed by that.
And actually, there was an interview with Audrey that we listened to from the '80s before she died, where she does say that, in fact, it did haunt
her for the rest of her life that she hadn't done more. But she did have them printed in American Vogue, in an article entitled "Believe It." They
were printed on a much larger scale and across many more pages in the end, and Audrey did fight for that.
AMANPOUR: You've played other characters of the World War II Nazi era. "The Reader," notably, you got an Oscar for it. But you started, I think,
your film career when you were 17 or so. Your dad, I read, drove you to the audition for "Heavenly Creatures." And it appears that you grew up in a
very level headed, loving family.
And I just wonder, given all the trauma and PTSD that you portray in films of those characters, what helped you get through a superstar career in the
level headed way that you seem to have turned out?
WINSLET: You know, the honest answer is, you know, part of me is sort of almost not sure. I think perhaps, exactly as you point out, I did have and
do have an extremely grounded, loving family who care about the important things. They care about togetherness. They care about feasting and sharing
and stopping and climbing trees and not being endlessly consumed by phones and social media and what the white noise is saying.
I've never read reviews. I've never been motivated by the wrong thing. And I think when you grow up in a family that is so wealthy with heart and
wealthy with affection and spontaneity it meant that I felt I was never searching for something more in myself.
I was searching for a dream. I was pursuing a dream that I believed in. I knew I wanted to act. I was determined to do it. And so, when I went for
that audition for "Heavenly Creatures," I just couldn't believe it. Even holding a film script in my hand, I was like, wow, this is a film script.
This is what it feels like. It's kind of heavy and thick. And, oh, my God, I have this character who's on every single page. My goodness. If I could
get this job. And my dad just looked at me and he said, you'll get it. And I thought, yes, actually. Yes.
And from then on, I have always tried to maintain a sense of groundedness, determination, perhaps when I was much younger, was possibly something that
gave me the courage to even walk over the threshold and into those audition rooms, because sometimes you have to just trick yourself. No, it is me that
they want. They just won't know it until I walk in the room. OK. It's me.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: At some point, though, you had so much pressure from the public gaze, probably the male gaze. You had so many paparazzi. You developed a
bit of a, you know, crisis, a health crisis over all that. How did you get through that dark tunnel?
WINSLET: I think where I was very fortunate, and I always jump to the positive, is that mentally I was OK. Like I didn't crack. I didn't have a
nervous breakdown. You know, I've never taken drugs. I'm really never taken drugs. And actually, people will often say to me, how did you not
completely go under? And again, that is because I had this level family.
If in doubt, I'd go home for Sunday lunch, and I'd feel fitter for things, and my mom would have put the world to rights with a wonderful roast
dinner. But I was a bit powerless as to how to navigate the way when dealing with a level of scrutiny from mainstream media that I knew was
morally very wrong. And what was I going to do? Stand up and defend myself for just being myself? I mean, I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just
being criticized for how I looked physically. That is not OK.
And it makes me so happy to sit back and watch wonderful, powerful young actresses who are just gorgeous and enjoying this experience of acting,
going into fulfilling careers and standing up for themselves and each other and not being afraid to say, hang on a minute, you can't say that about me.
That's not nice. And it's a wonderful thing to think that I might've, you know, been a part of igniting that discussion and making sure that those
conversations continue to happen, because it remains to be spectacularly important.
AMANPOUR: Kate Winslet, thank you so much indeed.
WINSLET: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And we turn now from that female pioneer to another, a trailblazer in television news. Connie Chung was one of the first women and
the first Asian American woman to anchor a major network newscast. Her new memoir, "Connie," tells the tale of how she broke down gender barriers in a
male dominated industry. And she's joining Walter Isaacson to share that story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Connie Chung, welcome to the show.
CONNIE CHUNG, AUTHOR, "CONNIE: A MEMOIR": Thank you, Walter. Happy to be with you.
ISAACSON: Your book is about breaking gender barriers in part. And one of the interesting things is the first chapter called "Male Envy." And you
said something very interesting, I realized I could be the son my parents desperately wanted. Tell me about that.
CHUNG: Well, it's true, Walter. I know that my father had written me a letter when I was in the news business already. And he said, maybe you can
carry on the name Chung the way sons do. And I suddenly realized, because they had lost three boys as infants, that they desperately wanted a son.
So, I thought I would solidify that name in history the way males carry on the last name of the family name in perpetuity.
I took it seriously. And I took the whole male thing seriously. That's why my first chapter is "Male Envy." I envy what men could do in any
corporation, in any business. They could command respect just by virtue of being a man. And I wanted to gain that kind of respect automatically.
ISAACSON: You know, when you say you were both a woman and Chinese, in the book, you refer to that as a twofer. Was that both a good thing and a bad
thing?
CHUNG: Yes, it was. It was primarily -- for me, it was a woman's battle because women were just not -- actually, not acceptable. We were very much
forced upon corporations, upon news organizations to be hired thanks to the Civil Rights Law of 1964 and also, because of lawsuits that seemed to be
creeping on to the corporate landscape. And unfortunately, for the corporations, they had to cough up jobs for women. Minorities were strong,
but it was primarily black groups that were pushing hard. Asian groups have never been on the map for aggressive equality.
ISAACSON: How did this affect the way you presented yourself on TV? You say in the book, I became aggressive, tough, bawdy, and extremely
competitive. Yes, I looked like a lotus blossom, you're right, but I talked like a sailor.
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CHUNG: It was just my way of creating an armor, because my approach was simply that I grew up a very, very shy, demure, Chinese a little girl. And
in school, I kind of sought student government positions, and that sort of gave me the courage to stand up and speak for myself.
Well, when I got into the news business and realized what an aggressive business it was, that reporters had to step out of their normal lanes and
just engage in behavior that probably wasn't something their mother wanted them to do. And so, I took that on, but I took pages from the male
playbook.
I knew that I needed to walk into a room and own it. I knew that I needed to be strong and aggressive. And so, I did that. But in the process, I also
developed a potty mouth. And I'm not proud of it, but it was my -- I don't know, it was a funny thing. I just felt like if I could talk trash the way
the men talked trash then maybe I could be one of the boys.
ISAACSON: One of the scenes early on in that is 1972. The famous McGovern campaign. Timothy Crouse does "The Boys on the Bus." You're the one who
isn't the boy. And you don't hang around the bar with everybody else at the Wayfair Hotel until you realize you have to change the way you act. Tell me
about that.
CHUNG: Well, I was -- as Timothy Crouse said in his book, that I was always in my room, tucked into bed. And, you know, Walter, I would call the
-- it was way before cell phones, way before we could get news automatically just by tapping our little phone. I would call first thing in
the morning. I'd call the overnight desk at CBS News in Washington, and I'd say, what happened? Anything happened overnight? Any stories break in the
morning? What's in The Washington Post? What's in The New York Times? What's in the Boston Globe and L.A. Times?
And he was reading the wires, the wire services, UDUPI (ph) and Reuters, and he could tell me about any story that had occurred overnight. I would
be poised to stick a microphone in George McGovern's face, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972, and I would question him about it, and all
the bleary eyed reporters who had been at the bar all night were just listening, because they knew it might be the story of the day.
When I realized that those boys in the bar were breaking stories, I thought, how did they do that? And it suddenly dawned on me, the campaign
workers were spilling the beans in the bar. So, I ended my early overnights, went to the bar, and tried to drink them under the table, too.
ISAACSON: You were very determined, and so was your co-anchor at the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather. In many ways, you're both aggressive, determined,
competitive. And was it inevitable that the two of you clashed? And tell me the story of Oklahoma City, where it really came to a head.
CHUNG: Yes, I do think it was inevitable that it would clash into a battle royale. What happened with Oklahoma City was that I happened to be on the
West Coast and I learned very quickly that the bombing in Oklahoma City had occurred at the Murrah building. And so, I called the office in New York
and said, do you want me to go? Because as reporters, as soon as we hear about a breaking story, we want to go there. We don't run from it.
The CBS headquarters in New York sent me to Oklahoma City at the same time, Dan was on -- Dan Rather was on vacation in Texas, which is his home. And
it was a time before cell phones. It was very easy to be out of touch. And they tried to call him, but he -- or contact him and they could not get to
him. So, there I was. I was the first one on the ground in Oklahoma City. They had sent a reporter from New York named Scott Kelly. We were the first
ones on the ground.
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We not only broke into regular programming to report about the horrific bombing caused by Timothy McVeigh, but I was the only sole anchor of the
big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS, to be anchoring that night from the scene. CBS was very proud that we were so quick, so fast.
Dan Rather was not happy because he felt that he had been on every big breaking story for years. I had no idea that all this drama was going on.
When I came back to New York two days later, after anchoring and doing special reports in Oklahoma City, I discovered a very bad scene that Dan
was, in fact, furious that he had not been sent. And in fact, I had been sent.
But there had been a pattern, Walter, for over the period of two years that I was co-anchoring, that anytime I went out and covered a story, Dan was
not happy about it and wanted to cover that story too. Ultimately, Dan told me that I needed to stay in the studio and read the teleprompter and not go
out on stories. It was -- I -- to me, it sounded like stay in the kitchen and stay -- you know, stay home. It was where you women belong. I may be
taking it to an extreme, but it was, just read the teleprompter, don't try and be a -- get out in the field.
ISAACSON: When you moved to ABC News, there are two other great women stars, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer. And you say, you saw them with you
as a powerful triumvirate. I envision we would be a sisterhood. Taking on the boys club. I foolishly believed that women would be my comrades. What
happened and why?
CHUNG: Barbara and Diane were in a battle, competing for interviews, that were -- every -- I don't know, like, movie stars, the get of the day.
Whatever story is a big story, they were both going after it. And at ABC, had I known, if management had told me that I could not pursue stories that
I wanted to pursue, even if Barbara and Diane were pursuing them, I would not have gone there.
In fact, I would -- if Barbara and Diane were competing for an interview or for a story, I could not go after it. It was the most bizarre -- there were
bizarre rules. But in many ways, I thought they would welcome me so that we could gang up and fight the boys, but it was not the case. In fact, Barbara
and Diane kind of were trying to recruit me so that I could battle with the other one.
So, it was a peculiar setup. But I think I've figured out what it was all about, women then and even before then, we're only allowed a tiny sliver of
the big pie that consisted mostly of men. And so, since we had to share that tiny sliver of the pie, Barbara and Diane were battling for the top,
the biggest portion of that pie, and I just didn't fit in. So, I backed off. I didn't want to be part of that.
ISAACSON: You write that television news devolved in the 1990s, and one of the themes in your book is this tabloidization of news. And you were kind
of a part of that, whether it be O. J. Simpson or Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Tell me, why did it devolve, and what did you feel about that
sort of tabloid culture hitting the national news?
CHUNG: The problem that caused the news to -- television is to devolve, and actually newspapers and print as well, was the fact that particularly
in television, the three networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, were taken over by companies that no longer believed in the value of journalism.
What happened was they wanted to make money. Consequently, each of the networks wanted to get viewers into the tent. And the way to get viewers
into the tent was to do pop culture, interviews with movie stars, interviews with someone who suddenly announced something that everybody
wanted to know about, but it may not be a savory subject.
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So, suddenly, we found ourselves in this tabloid milieu in which I found that the men would not try and get these interviews. I then was asked --
not asked, but told that Dan Rather would not touch the O. J. Simpson story that the 60 Minutes people would not touch it. The management told me that
I needed to go after an O. J. character because Barbara Walters was getting this, Diane Sawyer was getting that. And I thought, so what? I don't think
we should touch the story either. And they said, but nobody else will at CBS. You have to do it.
ISAACSON: In the 1990s, you interviewed Donald Trump. Do you think that the tabloidization and reality TV infection of news has brought us
characters like Donald Trump to the fore?
CHUNG: You're right. I interviewed him very reluctantly. This was a tabloid king. He was touting his real estate long before he decided to run
for president. And I was doing a magazine program. I was the only correspondent on it. And the executive producer said, we have an interview
with Donald Trump. And I had been traveling all over the country all week long and only had one day at home when I would tape the program and do the
Sunday news.
And I said, I don't want to interview him. Why are we interviewing him? He's just a tabloid bloviator. And he. He said, look, we have to fill the
program. But why would that? Why don't we fill it with something else? And he said, it's easy. Please go do it. He's already agreed.
And there I was. At the time, I didn't see the value of it. But once again, they said, well, Barbara Walters interviewed her -- him, why don't you? You
know, and I just didn't enjoy groveling for these sort of celebrity interviews. I -- and neither did the men. The men thought it was beneath
them.
ISAACSON: Tell me about generation Connie.
CHUNG: It was the most wonderful revelation for me that I ever could have imagined. A young woman named Connie Wong called and e-mailed me, and she
told me that I -- she was named after me, and I couldn't believe it. So, I talked to her on the phone and she found, yes. She said, she had -- her
parents had asked her what name would you like to have? You have to have an American name. And she knew only what she saw on television. She said,
Connie or Elma. And thankfully, they chose Connie.
UC Berkeley, and she was in the cafeteria and someone said, Connie, Connie Wong, and she turned around, because there's so many Asians at UC Berkeley,
half the cafeteria turned around. She discovered the phenomenon of the generation of Connie's. She wrote it for the Sunday, New York Times opinion
section, and it was the most beautifully written story of how Asian parents named their baby daughters, Connie, after me, I couldn't imagine. I had no
idea that this was going on.
I was just doing my job, Walter. I was going day by day, trying to climb my way up the ladder and I had no idea who was on the other side of the camera
watching. I came to the stark realization that my husband was right, he said, I was the Jackie Robinson of news.
And now, I think I finally can get my arms around the idea and kind of believe that my husband was right for the first time.
ISAACSON: Connie Chung, thank you so much for joining us.
CHUNG: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: What a lovely story. And finally, tonight, some unexpected turbulence in the skies. Now, after reaching cruising altitude, things got
a bit bumpy for passengers on a recent Qantas flight from Sydney to Japan during a technical issue that made individual movie selection unavailable.
[13:55:00]
The R-rated movie, "Daddio," was shown on every screen on the plane. The film, starring Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson, has nudity and quite a few
racy text messages. One passenger wrote on social media that, quote, "audible gasps" could be heard throughout the flight until the cabin crew
managed to switch screens over to the more family friendly inside out too. Qantas has had to apologize to passengers. Now, there's a flight that
really took off.
That's it for now. Thank you for watching. Goodbye from London.
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