Good grief.
Or Hillary about her made up ‘came under enemy fire’ story.
Yeah, he got out of his lane. Probably accidentally, but this is quite the crash.
I’ve never thought much about BW. His style of delivery has seemed affected to me but he seems nice enough.
I look more to his peers/coworkers to gauge whether the punishment is just. If they feel like him remaining/not remaining in that position doesn’t reflect poorly on them, that shows me their value system.
I find it odd he wanted to host The Tonight Show. (if reports are true) Totally different gig.
He needs to fall on his sword. Americans have short memories and love to forgive. Then again, look at Pete Rose…
I think the network is playing this right. They had to give him a significant punishment – and I think six months with no pay is significant – if they weren’t going to outright fire him. I don’t know anything about his contract and how that might have affected their decision not to fire him, but I suspect in these six months, Williams will find something else to do. As he should.
We’re long time BW watchers. When we lived in Japan we would watch Evening News streaming and it was comforting to see a familiar face and hear a familiar voice every night, he started to feel like a family member. However in recent years I’ve started to find his delivery annoying. What I dubbed the “faux furrowed brow” became a bit too theatrical and the maudlin “and finally” pieces a bit too manipulative. We started fast forwarding unless there was a good dog story. So it’s not with total regret that I looked forward to exploring alternatives. Last night I recorded both BBC America World News and Lester Holt. We watched the BBC news first, where the journalist had snagged a rare sit down interview with Syrian President Assad. He was really in the hot seat and it was the first time I’d heard him interviewed at length. However the rest of the broadcast would drag at times, and I found myself mind wandering from time to time. Next we watched NBC news, and I appreciated how much work goes in to their production. They had a clip of the Assad interview, with only the most interesting bits extracted. They had the live report from Richard Engel in Turkey, snow swirling around his head as he reported the latest on ISIS. And as Californians we love the nightly update from Boston and their snow situation. So even though more pure, more truthy, news is out there I think we’ll stay loyal to NBC and their crack production crew. I would be worried if the real journalists in the field started to misremember things, but I can accept some faults in the pretty boys who read the prompters every night.
I think he should wander the wilderness in a goat’s-hair tunic.
“the maudlin “and finally” pieces a bit too manipulative” @momsquad, what’s in the show and how it’s presented isn’t usually the anchor’s choice, but rather a group decision made by management/executive producers and even marketers/ratings experts. I think most people would be surprised just how little input the main anchor has. Like I said, they’re really mostly figureheads.
Brian Williams is/was the managing editor of NBC Nightly News.
Six months off and a multi-million dollar ‘fine’ is punishment enough, in my opinion. I don’t watch him since I prefer Scott Pelley when I watch U.S. news (Canadian news is usually better). It baffles me why someone in his position would do something like this but I think that Jon Stewart said it best here:
We are also long time BW watchers and before him we were long-time Tom Brokaw/NBC watchers. I watched the story in question and Williams’ take-back the following night but didn’t really think that much of it at the time, based on his explanation which sounded slightly off, but whatever. We really liked him and enjoyed his appearances on things like 30 Rock, SNL, and the late night talk shows although I had noticed particularly in recent years, that he had become oddly self-promoting during the nightly newscast, featuring himself in the report on knee surgery, his in-laws in a story about retirement community neighborhoods and particularly in his promotion of his daughter’s career (dating back to long before the HBO series Girls premiered). He was definitely more “show biz” than any other news anchors I can remember, apart from Katie Couric but it seems that there is practically no hard news anymore on any network as the budgets have been cut and the entertainment side has all but taken over so again, that seems to be the way it is now.
However, as more and more of the background information has spilled out I’m forced to conclude that he was never the man he portrayed and that his colleagues have known about his weaknesses for some time and tried to warn him to be more cautious. Particularly damning is the report that Tom Brokaw was furious about what he was doing, since he has had a long career in TV news and afaik, an impeccable reputation for integrity. That plus the reported interest in hosting a late night talk show forces me to the conclusion that his behavior has been serious enough that he’s going to have to go; he simply isn’t credible anymore. That job is a privilege, not a right and IMO he has abused his position.
No one has said he should be stoned to death or tarred and feathered; simply that what he’s done is a firing offense.
@Hunt Fooey right back atcha. As a non-Fox watcher I do get a vote and I don’t think that a six-month suspension will be enough. I don’t like being played and lied to, even by someone I really liked. I think NBC is going over his record with a fine-toothed comb along with their legal department and I predict they will find enough irregularity to terminate his contract.
And why shouldn’t Fox watchers get a vote anyway? Do you and the other Williams apologists have to politicize everything?
BW has long been a light weight journalist, intent on the clever turn of phrase, the sympathetic look, the jolly niceness, rarely, if ever, boring into an interviewee with intensity of look, questions, accountability. The word glib comes to mind, good company and entertaining, but not particularly trustworthy, as I learned about acquaintances and friendships way back in college. At the same time, I don’t know if today’s joirnalistic outlets, with their slants, will ever have access to the interviews of folks who should be squirming. We have created a disingenuous monster in our need for entertainment and instaneous supposed information.
In the grand scheme of things at a major network news operation, managing editor means very little @marie1234. I say this as someone who worked as a producer at an NBC O&O station for many years, and someone who still has friends in the news division at NBC.
Many of his “misremembers” occurred outside of the nightly news program, so those would be all on him.
None of us whatever we watch really get a vote here and I am beginning to think the polls are pretty much closed. Believability is not something the NBC news brand is going to be willing to sacrifice even for ratings just yet although I do agree that day may be coming. Moreover, if he’s a news anchor political is that last thing this controversy should be and that seems more like an argument against rather than for his staying on however I do think that ship is sailing away pretty quickly and he is now on his way to becoming a historical figure in the evolution or devolution of TV news.
Punishment is not the point, it’s about credibility and it’s just gone. Of course, for journalism generally this could be a very good thing. Call it a correction and he is a casualty but the wound was entirely self-inflicted, so yeah.
For some reason, every time I try to visualize Brian Williams in my mind, I see Peter Jennings when he was that age.
Not a great contribution to the thread, but I had to look him up on Google to get Peter out of my head.
Personally, I really, really hate it when someone like Brian Williams (who I admired just days ago) turns out to have fooled me about who they are since I have been part of the loyal audience who drives the ratings. Call me a sap, but I really liked the guy.
That said, I feel sorry for anyone experiencing such public humiliation and I particularly feel bad for his family. This must be excruciating and there are many extremely vicious folks on the internet and IRL who revel in piling on far out of proportion to the actual offense. BW did inflict this wound on himself but I’m very sorry that his family, who I’m sure love him, have to go through what must be a terrible time.
Then again, their suffering is completely insignificant compared to the suffering of Kayla Mueller’s family so really, I’m sure Brian will survive all this even if his career and reputation are in ruins. He may even become a better person. He certainly will be a cautionary tale.
Agree with this. Why opine about his possible characterological issues. How does that help a discussion of the issue?
I have always preferred the days when we knew nothing about the personal lives of the news anchors and reporters. Didn’t know if they were divorced, expecting, dealing with a life threatening disease, lost 30 pounds on the Atkins diet or just bought a vacation home in the Hamptons.