Ruth Marcus from the Washington Posts makes her case:
“I doubt that the six-month suspension the network announced Tuesday night is enough, and I think he needs to step down.”
…”This analysis misperceives the role of news anchor — as NBC itself recognized: “As Managing Editor and Anchor of ‘Nightly News,’ Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times,” Deborah Turness, the president of NBC News, said in a statement.
To the extent that the job is more than merely reading words off a teleprompter, it is to be the institutional voice of trust and reason, reassuring in a crisis, the ultimate reliable narrator. When issues of trustworthiness become a distraction, the anchor loses his credibility, and therefore his perch.”
Verne Gay for NewsDay.com has come to the conclusion that she can not trust Williams again, and neither should NBC:
“In fact, the one hard, undissolvable core value that an anchorman or woman must have is trust. Of course, anchormen and women, being humans, will err, and they will make mistakes and they will be imperfect.
But viewers know that. What they won’t tolerate is a lie. When trust is shattered, it is impossible to reassemble the pieces. Something else then replaces that badge of “trust.” It’s called “doubt.” In its own strange way, “doubt” is as powerful as “trust,” but impossible to shake. For a professional anchor, it’s a scarlet letter.”
Manuel Roig-Franzia, Scott Higham and Paul Farhi, also from the Washington post, reported that the pulse among peers he was known for embellishing stories:
“NBC officials were suspicious of the on-air apology, particularly the anchor’s statement that he had “made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” a network source said.
“Ninety percent of the people knew it was not misremembering, it was making it up,” the source said.
..But inside NBC, the Iraq fabrication was seen as the most damaging. “When helicopter crew members get shot down and you attach yourself to what they went through, it’s pretty outrageous,” a person familiar with internal discussions said.
“It kept piling up, and his story seemed less and less credible,” a network official said.
…”They also said they were not surprised by the allegations that Williams had inflated his involvement in news stories and what he supposedly witnessed while on assignment. They said his exaggerations were an open secret at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and became an inside joke, mostly because they were not made on “Nightly News.”
…NBC reporters and producers said:
“There are few people who talk to Brian in an authoritative way,” a former top NBC news manager said. “There really wasn’t anyone over him to say anything to him or to question his facts. There was no one managing him. There was constant changing to his whims.
“No one said, ‘No.’ ”
John Gruber from Daring Fireball doesn’t seem to give any sympathy:
“Not sure how he recovers from this. Humiliating, but he has only himself to blame.”
Not everyone is out to see Brian Williams banished from the news media. There are plenty that recognize the mistake and think the media are making too big of a deal out of it.
Paul Waldman writing for TheWeek.com sees it as a misstep not a career ender:
It should be noted that Williams’ inaccurate stories weren’t failures of his journalism, but failures in how he talked about his journalism off-camera.
…That’s an important distinction, but it may not be enough to exonerate him.
Roger Simon for Politico thinks people are over reacting:
Williams falsely claimed he was in a helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq a dozen years ago. In reality, he was in a different helicopter that could have been shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, but wasn’t.
…So I think we should just chill about Brian Williams. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Bill O’Reilly on Jimmy Kimmel thinks the outrage is not a concern for integrity in news but in the delight of the fallen:
“Every public person in this country is a target,” he said. “With the Internet — you know what it is, it’s a sewer. And these people delight in seeing famous people being taken apart.
I just think it’s wrong. I mean, we’re human beings just like everybody else.””I don’t like this taking and destroying people for sport business,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
Joe Scarborough also throws in defending Williams:
“If he exaggerated, if he puffed his chest out a little bit — news people do that,” Scarborough said, after quoting scripture about casting the first stone. “Politicians do that. Guys do that. We’ve all done that at times. You have to ask the question, where was it done? Was it done at David Letterman, or was it done when he was reporting the news?”
Jon Stewart seems to think it was merely an indiscretion:
It’s more sin that crime, don’t’ you agree?”
Stewart also points out the irony of the media’s coverage:
“Now, this may seem like overkill, but for me, no, it is not overkill, because I am happy, finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War, finally it might not necessarily be the 1st person you’d want held accountable on that list…”
So where do we stand on this? Is this a career mistake or an indiscretion? The questions hinge on what our standard is for our news anchors.
Colin Cowherd made a case on his radio show that news anchors have changed. America wants to enjoy watching the news, not just getting the news. Brian Williams did that better than anyone else.
Gone are the days where we choose our news anchors based on their journalistic credibility. Originally, there were 5 channels and anchors could afford to be reporters of news and not personalities. Now days we watch the news that caters to us. So we enjoy Brian Williams the personality, he won’t be as straight laced as the boring guy full of standards and journalistic integrity. That guy is respected, but not adored. He is for a place where substance is more important that show. That is not TV, maybe a documentary.
You think Walter Cronkite, the standard bearer, would be leading the news in ratings in 2015? His key demographic is 70+ and would have been canned as fast as Conan’s stint on the tonight show.
Fabricating stories for more viewers is one thing, embellishing your story for entertainment is another. What Dan Rather did is unforgivable, what Brian Williams did is forgettable.
We shouldn’t make this bigger than it is. Lets get past the facade of what we think the nightly news is and call it for what it is. Brian Williams was hired for ratings, not credibility. We now know what colleagues have known for years—he likes to embellish stories to entertain those around him. He is still the same guy. Until he pulls a “Dan Rather” this indiscretion is far from irreparable. I say let him continue, if America still enjoys the brand despite the imperfections, ratings will show. If it is irrepairable, ratings will show.