The president of NBC News said in a memo to staffers on Friday that the network has experienced “a difficult few days” after anchor Brian Williams admitted to telling a bogus story about his reporting during the Iraq War.
In the memo, obtained by the Poynter media news site and other outlets, President Deborah Turness stressed that “Brian apologized once again, and specifically expressed how sorry he is for the impact this has had on all of you and on this proud organization.”
The network is “working on what the best next steps are,” she added.
The Associated Press and the New York Daily News reported Friday that the network is launching an internal investigation into the matter.
Read the full memo at Poynter.
I’m copying my own post in another thread about Brian Williams in response to this story because it is appropriate here, too:
I put myself (in my imagination) in his shoes: I’m in a group of
helicopters in a war zone. I’m not only not serving as a trained
soldier on this flight, I have never been trained for this. I’m scared
shitless when bullets (or missiles, or whatever) are flying, and try to
hold it together and trust the real soldiers I’m dependent on to get out
of this. A copter is hit, and all of us set down. I don’t know what
the hell is going on, but I’m lucky I didn’t piss myself and I’m just
trying to follow their orders and still do my job. Now a fucking
legendary dust storm is upon us – I can’t see much beyond my face and
I’m trying to look at the damage to a 'copter and still listen for
instructions from the soldiers I’m with, because we know the bad guys
are out there, somewhere, trying to get us and hurt us. In the
aftermath I’m able to decipher my notes and report what happened. But
the incident looms so large in my mind that all I remember correctly
months or years later is that it is the scariest damned thing and I’m so
grateful to the brave souls who do this every day and got me (and
themselves) out of it. The fear is what I remember the most. Years
later, I’m still grateful to those who serve and admire them. The
details of my experience keep getting muddled in that basic feeling I
have every time I think of that time – I was so scared, that’s the
thing that sticks with me. That feeling.
I’ve always found him to be a decent guy, and not on a level with a
lot of blowhards who make stuff up. So I can personally cut him some
slack in this instance. He didn’t try to paint himself as a hero, and
said many times, “those who served, as I did not…” to indicate that he
doesn’t put himself on a par with the people who go into battle daily.
As others have said, when will there ever be any accountability for cable news, specifically, for Fox?
Canada definitely had the right idea.
“…As you would expect, we have a team dedicated to gathering the facts to help us make sense of all that has transpired…”
That’s the problem. Journalists are not supposed to “make sense” of the facts and interrupt them…just report them. The trouble at NBC News apparently goes all the way to the top.
They just cannot face the fact that they allowed themselves to be manipulated to tell the story that Rumsfeld wanted them to tell. There is nothing romantic, exciting or entertaining about war. It’s the last resort after all other strategies have been exhausted.
Williams just can’t help himself. Ever since he bought into the propaganda which was spoon fed to him by whatever source, he fully embraced yellow journalism. He became the center of every story…his thoughts and his feelings…instead of just reporting facts and letting the viewer decide.
Williams is one of the good guys in the business from all I’ve heard.
He gets the benefit of the doubt from me.
Williams is not supposed to have any imagination. He’s a journalist. He deals with facts. If he wants to be an entertainer and be the center of attention, then he should pursue that dream as a storyteller or writer. I hate that he was caught up in the moment as embedded media, but he was. He should have been suspicious not enthralled by the propaganda he was being given. He should never have felt he had to lie about anything. If he had stuck to the facts, none of this would be an issue today.
Our soldiers returning home from war deserve our understanding and support. But nobody has to romanticize what they went through and were forced to do to survive. It puts an undue burden on them to explain things that some will never be able to square in their own minds. Many of them are having a hard enough time dealing with what they saw over there already.
Williams is not to be pitied. He needs to accept that his behavior has not been professional and resign.