What Brian Williams Can Teach Us All
Especially the writers on Medium
Last evening I watched Brian Williams’ final soliloquy on his show The 11th Hour and I could not help but admire a man who himself admitted “regrets, I’ve had a few” — channeling Frank Sinatra. I know one regret that Williams certainly puts to the top of his professional list: his 2015 punishment for an embellishment (or perhaps an outright lie) he made on the air about his service in the Iraq War in 2003.
Ryan Schwartz writer for TV Line, puts the history of Mr. Williams’ error in clear focus: “In February 2015, Williams was hit with an unpaid, six-month suspension from Nightly News when it was found that he had falsely claimed that his helicopter was hit by a grenade in March 2003, as he covered the Iraq War. He was subsequently replaced by current anchor Lester Holt, and transitioned to a new role at MSNBC, where he initially anchored breaking news coverage before The 11th Hour bowed in September 2016.”
The event was reminiscent of the plot of the film Broadcast News, in which a reporter fakes his tears in a scene to trick the audience into believing he is moved by the events he is reporting. This seems trivial compared to Williams made-up heroic claim, and the NBC network was forced to banish Williams and cast him away into the ether despite the 24-hour news cycle.
