Information AboutConnie Chung |
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Constance Yu-Hwa Chung (; born August 20 , 1946 ) is a television newswoman. She was born and raised in Washington D.C. as one of several daughters of a high ranking Kuomintang diplomat from Taiwan . She graduated from Montgomery Blair High School and went on to get a degree in Journalism at the University Of Maryland in 1969. She has been married to talk show host Maury Povich since 1984. CAREER Chung's network television career has been with ABC , CBS , NBC , CNN , and MSNBC . Chung was a Washington D.C. based correspondent for the '' CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite '' in the early 1970s, during the Watergate political scandal. Later, Chung left for the Los Angeles owned and operated station of CBS , KNXT (now KCBS ). Moving to the nation's second largest (and highest paying) local news market, sunny southern California, was a smart career move, since popular local news anchors like KABC's Jerry Dunphy , Christine Lund, and KNBC's Paul Moyer and Kelly Lange and Tritia Toyota were pulling in million dollar annual salaries. She returned with great fanfare to network news as NBC created a new early program, NBC News at Sunrise, which was scheduled right before the popular Today program. Later, NBC created American Almanac, which she co-hosted with Roger Mudd, after Mudd left the NBC Nightly News, where he co-anchored for two years with Tom Brokaw. Chung left NBC for CBS where she hosted Saturday Night with Connie Chung, and On June 1 , 1993 , she became the second woman (after Barbara Walters ) to co-anchor a major network's national news broadcast (with CBS). The teaming did not prove a commercial success. After her unsuccessful co-anchoring stint with Dan Rather , Chung jumped to ABC News where she co-hosted 20/20 and began independent interviews—a field which would soon become her trademark. As an interviewer, Chung displayed a distinct style. Her interrogations were largely casual and gentle, but would often be punctuated by a rapid-fire barrage of sharp questions. Despite this, her interviews were still widely recognized as being decidedly softer than those of other interviewers, such as Barbara Walters or Mike Wallace . Consequently, her interviews were often used as a PR move by those looking to overcome Scandal or controversy. Some of her more famous interview subjects include Claus Von Bülow and Congress man Gary Condit . She faced controversy when, on an interview with Kathleen Gingrich, mother of conservative politician Newt Gingrich , Chung convinced her to give opinions about Hillary Clinton on the air. The controversial part was that Chung compromised her journalistic integrity by telling Ms. Gingrich the conversation was "just between you and me". Her last interview of consequence was with Gary Condit, on his relationship with murdered Washington D.C. intern Chandra Levy . She was a popular guest host of the morning program, Good Morning America . After short-lived host Lisa McRee left the program, Chung declined to take over on a permanent basis, saying she did not want to broadcast 10 hours a week in early morning hours. Chung briefly hosted her own show on CNN entitled '' Connie Chung Tonight '', where she was paid $2 million per year. Though her arrival at CNN was heavily hyped by the network, her show was panned by critics. She was criticized for awkward interviews and somewhat superficial news coverage. CNN changed her show from live to tape-delay to make it flow better. Although it did moderately well in the ratings, her show was suspended once the 2003 Iraq War began. During the war, she was reduced to reading hourly headlines. Once CNN resumed regular programming, Chung requested that CNN resume broadcasting her show as soon as possible. The network responded by cancelling it, even though her contract had not yet expired. In an interview, CNN founder Ted Turner called the show "just awful." Recent She appeared as a guest on '' The View '' in 2005. In January 2006, Chung and Maury Povich (her husband since 1984 ), began hosting a show titled ''Weekends with Maury and Connie''. It was Chung's first appearance on television since 2003. On a March 20, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report , Connie Chung was interviewed by Stephen Colbert. PARODY Even when not in the public eye, Chung has been lampooned regularly on the FOX television series '' MADtv '' by Korean-American comedian Bobby Lee wearing Drag . The news reporter character Trisha Takanawa on the Animated Television Series '' Family Guy '' may be a caricature of Chung as well. REFERENCES IN TELEVISION
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