CONNIE CHUNG Biography - People in the News and Media

 
 

Biography » people in the news and media » connie chung

CONNIE CHUNG

Name: Connie Chung                                                                         
Born: 20 August 1946 Washington, D.C., U.S.                                               
                                                                                           
Constance Yu-Hwa Chung Povich (born August 20, 1946) is an American journalist who has     
appeared on many USA television news networks.                                             
                                                                                           
The youngest of ten children (of whom she and four others survived) of a                   
high-ranking Republic of China diplomat from Taiwan, she was born and raised in           
Washington, D.C. She graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver                 
Spring, Maryland, and went on to receive a degree in journalism at the                     
University of Maryland, College Park in 1969. She has been married to talk show           
host Maury Povich since 1984. Chung converted to Judaism upon her marriage to             
Povich. Chung announced that she was reducing her workload in 1991 in the                 
hopes of getting pregnant. Together, they have one son, Matthew Jay Povich,               
adopted on June 20, 1995.                                                                 
                                                                                           
Chung's network television career has spanned NBC, CBS, ABC, 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). She then moved to the nation's second largest (and highest paying) local           
markets, southern California. Chung also anchored the CBS Newsbriefs for the               
west coast stations from the KNXT studios at Columbia Square during her tenure             
there.                                                                                     
                                                                                           
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 with ABC in               
1976) to co-anchor a major network’s national news broadcast (with CBS; the solo         
national news anchor title goes to Sophie Thibault, with the French-Canadian               
network TVA in 2002, and in the United States, to Katie Couric at CBS.). While             
hosting the CBS Evening News, Chung also hosted a side project on CBS, Eye to             
Eye with Connie Chung. After her unsuccessful co-anchoring stint with Dan Rather           
ended in 1995, Chung jumped to ABC News where she co-hosted 20/20 and began               
independent interviews, a field which would soon become her trademark.                     
                                                                                           
Chung's interviews were largely gentle, but often they were 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 public relations move by those looking to overcome scandal or                   
controversy. Some of her more famous interview subjects include Claus von Bulow           
and U.S. Representative Gary Condit.