Think of the Brian Williams story in terms of a sports referee.
A journalist shouldn’t ever become the story any more than, say, a football referee should determine the outcome of an athletic event. The Super Bowl played in Glendale, Ariz., the game won by the New England Patriots? Does anyone remember the officials in that game? No. They weren’t part of the story.
Williams, though, has become a story onto himself in light of the “Choppergate” controversy. He has told a tall tale for a dozen years about being shot down in Iraq in 2003. Then it came out he wasn’t shot down. Now we’re learning that his apology might not even add up.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/brian-williams-is-in-serious-trouble-202226.html?hp=l1_3_b2
The latest now is that the NBC Nightly News anchor is stepping aside “for a few days” to sort things out.
The media being what they are and with public curiosity crystallizing by the hour over this matter, it is appearing increasingly unlikely that the one-time solid broadcast journalist is going to regain his footing.
I consider myself a serious consumer of news. I get it from several places — online, print, broadcast TV and cable TV. I receive lots of punditry, commentary, editorializing throughout the political and philosophical universe.
I’m trying right at this moment to imagine ever listening to Brian Williams tell me what’s happening in the world without wondering: Is he giving it to me straight?
These men and women trade almost exclusively on the trust they build with their viewers. That trust is constructed with a commodity that isĀ rock solid, but only if it doesn’t suffer damage. Then it becomes highly fragile.
That commodity isĀ the truth, the slightest fudging of which rendersĀ the message being delivered meaningless. It appears to me that Brian Williams has doneĀ more than “misremember” a wartime event.
He has become The Story.