Tom Brokaw Gives Health Update Amid Blood Cancer Battle

Tom Brokaw spoke with his former Today co-host Jane Pauley on CBS News Sunday Morning, this time to discuss his experience with blood cancer. “I’ve had a bad experience,” Brokaw said in the excerpt released by the network. “I kept thinking bad things wouldn’t happen to me. But as I grew older, I began to develop this condition. And what you try to do is control it as much as you can.” In 2005, Brokaw was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He has written about his experiences in the 2015 book A Lucky Life Interrupted, which he published in 2015. Although he continued to appear on NBC News and MSNBC, he announced that he would be retiring in 2021 after 55 years. He told Pauley, “I’ve had to change my life in some way. I really had to give up my daily activity with NBC. You know, I had to walk away from them, as they were walking way from me. I just wasn’t the same person.”

In addition, he said, “for the first time in my life, I was kind of out there, you know, in a place I had never been in my life.” Also on the show, Brokaw recalled introducing Pauley to her now-husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, along with his wife Meredith Lynn Auld. “I said… ‘Boy, Garry is really a good friend, he’s at the office a lot,’” he said. “And Meredith said, ‘It’s not about you; he wants to meet Jane.’ I said, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about that!’” In his new book, Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story, Brokaw recounts the life story of his parents. Only Brokaw has headed all three of NBC News’ signature shows: Today, NBC Nightly News, and Meet the Press. His first book, The Greatest Generation, made a huge impression on readers, coining a name for the generation of Americans who endured the Great Depression and fought in World War II.

Brokaw began his journalism career by covering the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and served as NBC’s chief White House correspondent during the Watergate scandal. He began hosting “Today” in 1976 and became anchor of “Nightly News” in 1983. After Tim Russert’s death in 2008, he was an interim host of “Meet the Press.” In 2018, Brokaw denied allegations made by two women, one of whom was Linda Vester, a former NBC and Fox News journalist who claimed Brokaw made unwanted advances during the 1990s. Over 60 NBC News colleagues, including Rachel Maddow, Kelly O’Donnell, and Andrea Mitchell, signed a letter defending Brokaw’s character, and he denied the claims made against him.