Matt Lauer fired from NBC News: Tougher harassment stances needed at companies, Sean Spicer says
NBC News has fired ‘Today Show’ host Matt Lauer for inappropriate workplace behavior.
Co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb announced Lauer’s firing on air on Wednesday morning by reading NBC News Chairman Andy Lack’s statement, which stated that Lauer’s behavior violated company standards.
Former White House Press Secretary under President Trump Sean Spicer told FOX Business how companies can tackle sexual harassment in the workplace.
Spicer said that first each complaint needs to be thoroughly investigated.
“Does it have merit? Because we want to make sure that every person that is accused of anything has the opportunity of due process,” Spicer told Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria.”
More importantly, in Spicer’s opinion, the workforce must be retrained to understand what behavior is tolerable and offensive.
“We have to look at the culture of each institution and there needs to be proper training and proper and clear guidelines as to the standards that every institution is going to set as far as what is expected of employees male, female, old and young, that there is certain behavior… that is acceptable and unacceptable,” Spicer said.
President Donald Trump tweeted shortly after the announcement, saying “wow,” and then questioned when top executives at NBC and Comcast would be fired over ‘fake news.’
Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017
Spicer added, companies should understand “certain behavior is unacceptable.”
“In some cases we can blame this on culture, we can blame it on generational differences but at the end of the day those don’t excuse bad behavior,” Spicer said.