From the midweek Morning Jolt:
Somewhere Roger Goodell Is Saying, ‘Man, They Came Down Hard on Brian Williams!’
Am I crazy for thinking this is about the right punishment?
Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC’s top-rated “Nightly News” program, has been suspended without pay for six months after admitting last week that a story he told about coming under fire on a helicopter during the Iraq war was not true, the network said on Tuesday.
As one of America’s most prominent journalists, Williams’ suspension and sudden downfall casts a pall over the Comcast Corp-owned network and its reputation as one of the most authoritative sources for news in the United States.
“By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News,” NBC Universal Chief Executive Officer Steve Burke said in a statement from the network. “His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate.”
Williams, 55, a star anchor who has led “Nightly News” since 2004, has told different versions of a tale in which a U.S. military helicopter he was riding in during the first days of the Iraq war in 2003 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Credit where it’s due; a lot of people thought NBC News would sweep it under the rug or make excuses. When I speculated about a period of unpaid leave, my friend Cam noted that if you can easily afford the suspension, it’s not much of a punishment. If the public reports about Williams’ contract are correct, six months unpaid leave amounts to about $5 million in lost pay for Williams. It’s serious. And yet firing Williams over the tales would seem disproportionate. If a runaway ego was a firing offense in the news business, the offices would be almost empty.
Stephen Miller: “[NBC News anchor Brian] Williams, not unlike our current President seems as though he would rather be an entertainer over the job he was hired to do.”
He may be more right than he knows; Jonah offers an eye-opening statistic on how many people knew Williams was a news anchor:
Williams was an unobtrusive news-reading mannequin who occasionally broke character to tell jokes — and fake tales of valor — on late-night talk shows. Perhaps he told these stories because, deep down, he knew he was a false idol. Or maybe not.
But it is instructive to watch Williams’s fellow media Olympians rally to his defense. They have an investment in a system that rewards celebrity so handsomely — and not just financially. They are the last beneficiaries of the Old Order, when nightly news anchors were cultivated to be “the voice of God,” as insiders at CBS used to call the position.
Those days are almost gone. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 27 percent of respondents could correctly identify Williams from his photograph, and only 3 percent could say what he did for a living. Three percent thought he was Tom Brokaw, and 2 percent thought he was Joe Biden.
But let’s give Brian Williams a fair hearing. First witness for the defense?
Dan Rather: “He’s a longtime friend and we have been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together. Brian is an honest, decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor–and a brave one.”
Uh, the guy who ran the fake memos story doesn’t carry a lot of weight when it comes to assessing honesty. Next witness?
Piers Morgan: “He said something to me that made me believe him, when he said it wasn’t a willful act on his part to pump himself up. In other words, it was kind of accidental.”
Ergh. This from the guy who invited conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his show to speak for America’s gun owners. Next witness?
Geraldo Rivera, here to draw us a map of the Iraq incident…eh, maybe he’s not the right supporting character witness to draw a line in the sand over this controversy. Let’s move on to the next witness?
Michael Moore: “In the post-9/11 years, he did the nightly news hour on MSNBC/CNBC, and he was one of the few people in TV news who would allow an opposition voice such as mine on the air. I remember thinking this is a man with integrity.”
Lock him up!