A Very Public Execution: The Firing of Ann Curry

It's always dark when you wake up. You start every day at 4 a.m. - sometimes at home, sometimes in the desert of northern Sudan. You are never tired; you can't afford it. Everyone expects you to be "on" by sunrise. You invest in skin treatments like an IRA. You never stop smiling. "Sociability is just a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth," you repeat to yourself as a personal mantra before the red light flips on at dawn. Your work is more than just a job, it's your identity. You have to act like these people around you are your family and believe it. Your survival depends on it. You do this for 34 years. Then you are fired. Welcome to NBC. 

When history comes to judge the righteous and the damned in the case of Ann Curry vs. her former network, NBC, does anyone come out a winner?

A veteran of the broadcast news slog, Curry started her career at the bottom as an intern for local TV station station KTVL in Medford, Ore., and continued to happily plug away the hours wherever she went. Reporting was her obsession; her enthusiasm for the job was almost frightening, according to co-workers. She dutifully waited in the wings at the "Today" show for 13 years, filing reports from distant locales as a national and international correspondent, and sometime guest-anchor, injecting some much needed hard news into an otherwise bloated, soporific four-hours of landmark Justin Bieber concert coverage and revealing portraits of the 10 best pet Halloween costumes, and all while she watched a colleague jump over her for the top position at the program. 

Finally, after anchor Meredith Vieira left the show, NBC gave Curry her shot at co-hosting "Today" with Matt Lauer in 2011, but the victory was short-lived. Curry was ostensibly blamed for the program's flagging ratings, and unceremoniously dumped on live TV last year. Like any true family, there was more to the squabble than just what appeared on the surface; that much was obvious from her final appearance on the show. 

Curry's contract with NBC was terminated not due to low ratings, but because Lauer "simply didn't like her" to begin with, according to a profile in New York Magazine. The roughly 8,000-word piece alleges that Lauer often "openly complained" about Curry's presence on the "Today" show, and that he was the real reason she was fired.

Things only got worse between the two over time. Lauer grew so unhappy with Curry, NBC allowed him to pursue a position hosting another show at ABC with his former co-host Katie Couric. He even openly courted the rival network, with his agent and execs at ABC saying they considered negotiations to be a done deal. Instead, it seems Lauer used the job with ABC to leverage a far better contract for himself at NBC at the expense of losing Curry, whose job he did nothing to try and save. With Lauer holding all the cards, NBC handed the host a considerable raise of $25-million-a-year for a four-day work week. 

That behind-the-scenes feuding between Lauer and Curry culminated with her farewell carried out as a public execution, a lynching dressed up as a going away party; simultaneously as breathless and gut wrenching as the sound of a death rattle. As Lauer attempted to embrace and kiss his TV wife, fawning, and praising Curry, she recoiled in disgust. Curry could hardly contain the cringe rapidly spreading across her face while Lauer told her just how much she'd meant to the show and him. You could see the light draining from Curry's eyes.  

It's not that the decision to fire Curry was especially offensive in and of itself, or morally wrong. In fact, it made sense from NBC's point of view. By all available accounts and evidence, Curry was ill-suited for the anchor job at "Today." She was stiff and struggled to make small talk. She bristled when co-hosts attempted to joke with her. And not once did she ever buy Kathy Lee and Hoda wine. 

Still, you have to wonder: Did NBC even stop to consider what Curry had meant to "Today" or its viewers? The network violated the first rule of crisis communications: always accept responsibility for your actions. Instead of admitting there had been disagreements with talent - something usually referred to as "creative differences" - or trying to reach some middle road with Lauer and Curry, the network banished her to the hinterlands and turned her into the worst kind of enemy - a martyr. And all while losing an integral piece of the show in the process.

There's always been a yawning cultural divide separating print - or traditional - news from broadcast reporting. When I was in college, it was easy enough to spot the broadcast students. They were the kids with the terrifying smiles, impeccably dressed for every 8 a.m. lecture, charismatic, cool, and confident, though sometimes not enough to correctly pronounce "Chihuahua." At the school newspaper, we hyperbolized them as the antithesis of everything we proudly believed we stood for: nothing more than shiny teeth with the rare ability to speak eloquently about local cat fashion shows. 

Clearly an over generalization, but at "Today", whether Curry knew it or not - or even liked it - she represented the old school of journalism that resisted the pap. She was part of the show's slim attempt at the kind of respectable, tenacious reporting that much of modern broadcast has had drained like a cyst in favor of easily digestible morning variety shows, like "Today." Curry traveled across the globe, fearlessly seeking out stories. She convinced former NBC president Jeff Zucker to fly her to Kosovo to report on genocide - when she was the new girl. She reported from war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan on numerous occasions. Announced Osama bin Laden's death from Pakistan. She chased tsunamis in Japan and Sri Lanka. She covered the devastating earthquake in Haiti. And, perhaps most harrowing, traveled with former first lady Laura Bush to Africa. 

So what, if anything, is to be gained from the fable of the princess and the peacock? As Conan O'Brien knows all too well, sometimes there's simply no justice, and the only lesson to be learned is bracing yourself for the hangman. Perhaps, for the diehards, it's always dark when you wake up. "The more you know ..."