Katie Couric insists book Going There wasn’t ‘mean-spirited,’ people she called out ‘deserved it’

Katie Couric has insisted that her 2021 memoir wasn’t ‘mean-spirited at all,’ claiming in a new interview that the people she called out in her book ‘deserve to be called out.’

The 65-year-old journalist discussed the backlash against her book, Going There, on Dear Media’s It Sure Is a Beautiful Day podcast with Catt Sadler, admitting that her writing was ‘cheeky’ and ‘snarky’ but that most of the people of whom she was have been fired.

Couric also discussed how hard it was to write about her friendship with her former Today show cohost Matt Lauer, admitting that it was important that she ‘show Matt as a full human being’ and ‘convey why I really enjoyed working with him’ — even if the sexual abuse allegations that came later were so disappointing. 

Couric also discussed how hard it was to write about with her former Today show cohost Matt Lauer, admitting that it was important that she ‘show Matt as a full human being’ 

The 65-year-old journalist discussed the backlash against her book, Going There, on Dear Media’s It Sure Is a Beautiful Day podcast with Catt Sadler

Couric didn’t pull punches in the book, Going There, which came out in October 2021

Couric didn’t pull punches in the book, which was met with mixed reactions — though she insists that people who actually read the memoir, and not just excerpts, have had a positive response.

‘I think the book is honest, but I don’t think it’s mean-spirited at all. It’s very self-reflective, very self-critical,’ she explained. 

‘I think the people who I called out deserve to be called out. Most of them have been fired at this point. 

‘And, you know, it was cheeky, some might say snarky, and I had some funny lines here and there.’     

Couric wasn’t happy that there was such a negative reaction, and that some people focused on ‘cherry-picked’ excerpts.

‘So that was disappointing at first, honestly, because I think I felt so enormously proud of the book and how I thought it was very smart and thoughtful and funny and obviously very sad in places, but kind of to have a twisted early on was a bummer for me,’ she said.

‘The feedback I’ve gotten from the book has been so positive from people who’ve actually read it.’   

 ‘I think the people who I called out deserve to be called out. Most of them have been fired at this point,’ she said

Throughout the memoir, Couric blasted many of her colleagues and shared intimate details about Martha Stewart, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former NBC president Michael Gartner, and anchors Deborah Norville, Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer, Ashleigh Banfield.

But when it came to Lauer, with whom she worked closely for nine years as co-anchored of the network’s flagship morning show, she wanted to show the there was more to him than just his sexual allegation scandals.

‘[I was] really trying to show Matt as a full human being [and] trying to convey why I really enjoyed working with him – how talented he is, and yet how disappointed I was in learning about this behavior,’ she said.

She said she also ‘tried to establish’ that there was a time when ‘certain behaviors at these organizations, people turned a blind eye.’

‘It was acceptable, [there were] a lot of permissive environments that lead the way to more serious transgressions,’ she explained.

‘And so, you know, instead of being super judgey about Matt – although I think I was pretty strong in my reaction, ultimately – I really tried to illustrate how I processed it, how I learned about these things, how I talked to some of the women who were, honestly, very damaged from these experiences, how I educated myself on the role of the power dynamics of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.

‘[I was] really trying to show Matt as a full human being [and] trying to convey why I really enjoyed working with him – how talented he is, and yet how disappointed I was in learning about this behavior,’ she said. They are pictured together in 2006

She said she also ‘tried to establish’ that there was a time when ‘certain behaviors at these organizations, people turned a blind eye’ (pictured together in 2014) 

‘So that was really hard, but I had spent so much time prior to that processing and thinking about it and even writing about it,’ she continued.

Couric said that before the memoir, she had written a piece about Lauer for the Atlantic, but reserved the right to keep it from being published. 

‘It was just too soon for me. It was just too soon for me, but I had been spending a lot of time just kind of wrapping my head around the whole thing,’ she said.   

Lauer  was fired in 2017, just two days after an unidentified female colleague accused him of inappropriate behavior.

At the time, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack said it was the ‘first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News,’ but claimed they had reason to believe there were other incidents. 

Later, in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book, Catch and Kill, producer Brooke Nevils claimed that Lauer anally raped her while the two were covering the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Lauer was fired in 2017, just two days after an unidentified female colleague accused him of inappropriate behavior. He is pictured in 2017 before his termination

Lauer responded by saying, ‘There was absolutely nothing aggressive about that encounter, Brooke did not do or say anything to object.’ 

While promoting her 2021 book, Couric said that her friendship with Lauer ‘just fizzled out’ in the wake of his downfall from the allegations, adding that the disgraced anchor ‘probably thought that she had abandoned him.’

She said she was ‘taken aback’ by everything she had read and heard about Lauer, including allegations that he was inappropriate with a young woman she had brought to NBC – but she still texted him to say she ‘loved’ him after everything went down. 

In the book, she shared portions of the text messages that she sent to Lauer after he was fired. 

She wrote to him: ‘I am crushed. I love you and care about you deeply. I am here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days ahead.’ 

He responded with a blowing kiss emoji.   

‘I think it’s sort of clear through the text messages that I shared, and some I didn’t because I thought they were too personal that he had written – I sort of paraphrased them – you could see when I didn’t call him that time because I heard about another situation involving a young woman I had brought to NBC,’ Couric said during a Zoom interview with Nancy O’Dell on talkshoplive last year. 

Couric (pictured with Lauer in 2015) said that she was ‘taken aback’ by everything she had read and heard about him, though she still texted him that she ‘loved’ him

‘And we were scheduled to have a phone call to discuss what was going on and I said, “I’m going to call you in a few days,” I think he probably knew I had read that article and probably thought that I had abandoned him.’

The journalist, who has worked at all three major networks, clarified that she was never all that close to Lauer outside of work.

‘People are like, “How did you not know?” And I think people just don’t understand that the Today show is like being in a Broadway play. 

‘You can have incredible chemistry, have so much fun, everything can click, you get to know each other really well to the point of finishing each other’s sentences, but for us, that was two hours in the day. As much as I enjoyed working with Matt, we were not social friends. We had very separate lives.’

‘I think I was just so taken back by everything I was learning in real time that I had these two thoughts in my head about my friendship with Matt and the horrific things I was reading,’ Couric said. 

‘I think I was just trying to square these two things. Basically you see that honestly things just fizzled out.

‘I think our legacy was very intertwined because we worked together and I think we were such a successful pairing on a morning show.’