Two former NBC News employees have accused Tom Brokaw of sexual harassment
The Washington Post ran an in-depth investigative piece today into the current culture at NBC News, examining the ways the organization has responded to accusations of sexual harassment against some of its most prominent names—most notably former Today host Matt Lauer, who was fired from the network last November amid accusations of widespread harassment by women working under him. But the Post piece also contains accusations against another of the organization’s biggest and most respected talents, revealing allegations of harassment from two former NBC News employees against former anchor Tom Brokaw.
One of the women, former NBC News At Sunrise anchor Linda Vester, has gone on the record with her accusations, granting Variety a detailed account of a period in the mid-1990s in which she says Brokaw—then the most powerful man at the network—repeatedly sent her suggestive messages, invited himself to her hotel rooms, and forcibly attempted to kiss her on two separate occasions. Vester says she kept detailed notes of the various encounters, including her multiple attempts to deflect Brokaw’s attention. “I was trying to use humor to signal that I was not interested in whatever he was suggesting,” she notes at one point, “So I wrote, ‘I only drink milk and cookies.’ It was the only thing I could think of at the moment, hoping it would jolt him into realizing that this was inappropriate and I was [nearly] 30 years younger than him.” According to Vester, Brokaw apparently interpreted the comment as banter, instead; a year after the first incident, he left her a note at her London office referencing the comment.
Vester details two separate encounters in which Brokaw pressured her into letting him enter her hotel room, stating that, on both occasions, she was too afraid of what he might do to her career to overtly say no. The second incident occurred during the aforementioned London visit; according to Vester: “In the same exact way as in 1994, he reached behind my neck and tried to force my head toward him and force me to kiss him. I broke away again. I said, ‘You need to go.’ And incredibly, he said, ‘Can you walk me to a taxi?’ I thought, ‘You just tried to assault me, but you expect me to walk you to a taxi?’”
The other accusations come from a former production assistant at the network. She told the Post that, in the mid-1990s,