Matt Lauer’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram go offline after Today Show firing
The disgraced former co-anchor of The Today Show has removed all of his public profiles in the wake of his firing from NBC News on Wednesday. This move shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at this point — he wasn’t active on many of them, and it felt mostly like they existed simply for the sake of him having a social channel so that fake account with people pretending to be him didn’t pop up.
Here’s what we do consider a surprise — that he didn’t use any of those to issue his apology earlier today. Instead, Today itself and many other outlets received his statement in full, one in which he took responsibility for some, but not all, of the actions that have been reported. He stated the words “I’m sorry,” but is that enough? You can read CarterMatt’s thoughts on that here where we discuss that further.
We don’t foresee Lauer’s social channels returning anytime soon, largely because we have a hard time seeing any other network hiring him. Who wants to deal with this backlash when there are many other worthy candidates out there?
This news comes in the midst of a Page Six report stating that Lauer’s team may be trying to get him the additional $30 million he is owed through his NBC contract. Here is what a source close to his team (reportedly) had to say:
“They are currently looking at his contract and determining whether the claims against him, which clearly would affect any moral clause in his contract and his ensuing termination would cut off his contractual rights to be paid through to the end of his contract.”
Another TV insider labeled it unlikely that Lauer will be paid, largely because of a morals clause that often includes the sort of inappropriate behavior in which he is accused of doing. Lauer has already raked in millions through his time at NBC, and we can only imagine what the backlash would be if the network ended up paying him off for time he didn’t work. We just don’t foresee it.
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