A week ago yesterday, NBC executives announced that Lester Holt will become the latest permanent host of the Weekly Nightly News program and that former Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will now be working for as a breaking news anchor and on special reports for MSNBC. The announcement follows a six month waiting period after Williams was suspended earlier this year by the network for embellishing, basically lying about some of his adventures in the Middle East.
It is sad that a man who is so well liked and was once highly regarded in the news business as a down-to-Earth reporter resorted to juvenile tactics to augment his credibility. Williams did apologize for his remarks during an interview on the Today Show last Thursday. But I don’t think any amount of apologies, no matter how sincere, can now save his reputation or let him be host of the Nightly News Program again.
I worked in small market radio news for nearly 13 years. I pride myself in never lying about a major or even minor story – or about stories that I covered. But I do know what it’s like to be a disgraced reporter. I know that once you flub even a slight detail in a news story, you never forget it and you are afraid of making the same mistake again. I recall a car accident I reported on nearly 20 years ago. It was what we call in the business a fairly routine story. Two drivers sustained minor injuries, one of which sought hospitalization. The Missouri State Highway Patrol report also stated that one of the drivers was cited/arrested for causing the accident. So what’s the big deal you ask? I wrote down the wrong name in the person getting charged. I was in deep trouble with the news director, program director and general manager – not to mention the driver I said that was never charged. The news director wrote an apology which I had to read on the air in every newscast I read the next day. I also had to apologize to the woman who I said was cited. She threatened to sue the station(s) I was working for. Plus I had to hand in all my news stories for the new month to the program director before they could even be allowed to run on the air. All of this happened because I made a mistake. I will not go into the reasons why I made the mistake other than to say that some personal crises at home (so to speak) distracted me and my centers of judgement were impaired. Still, I screwed up and I don’t think I ever fully got my reputation back. I know I never fully regained my self-confidence as a news reporter. Still I worked hard to make sure to never make that mistake again.
Much like what I faced in June 1996 all the way through my retirement from radio in September 2006, Brian Williams has a long road to travel to regain his journalistic integrity. He knows his ego got the best of him. He’s admitted to that. But there are people who profess they will NEVER trust Brian Williams again. He exaggerated the truth, okay lied, about being on a helicopter that was forced down by enemy fire in Iraq. Turns out, he was thirty miles away from that fight. I admit, I’m among the contingent of people who will be very skeptical of what he reports from here on out. Maybe there is another lesson viewers/listeners can take out of this mess. Maybe we should all do what I was first taught to do in college – question everything, take nothing for granted. I hope Brian Williams will do the same and hope that he is able to restore his reputation at MSNBC when he returns to the airwaves this August.
Joe Haffner
June 25, 2015
Joe's Random Thoughts! 