A Delicate Balance for NBC News Anchors Covering Pandemic-Hobbled Tokyo Olympics

Lester Holt was due to fly to Tokyo in less than 24 hours to cover the year-delayed Summer Games, when Toshiro Muto, chief of the organizing committee, said last Tuesday that he could not rule out an 11th hour cancellation of the troubled $15 billion event. It was only the latest in a steady stream of dire pronouncements emerging from Japan since the International Olympic Committee determined to forge ahead with a global sporting event in the midst of a pandemic. Holt was not fazed. “I was not at all surprised to hear the Games were subject to cancellation even that close to the Opening Ceremony,” said Holt. The “Nightly News” anchor boarded his flight last Wednesday and — after completing reams of paperwork on the plane and enduring three hours of checkpoints and medical screening (including a COVID-19 test) — was anchoring the newscast from Tokyo by Thursday, one day before the Opening Ceremony. “Lester and I had a good laugh about it,” says “Nightly” executive producer Jennifer Suozzo, who remains working Stateside. “You have to just kind of throw your hands up and go with it. The worst that happens is he gets over there, he turns around and comes back. It’s not

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