Brian Williams, America’s top news anchor, became a national laughingstock last week when videos of him telling all manner of self-aggrandizing lies went viral. It spoke volumes, however, that he responded in self-aggrandizing fashion by announcing that he was taking himself off the air “for a few days” – presumably until the next viral scandal relegates his to the dustbin of the twitterverse.
I thought he presumed too much and duly wrote, in “Brian Williams Pinocchios His Career,” February 7, 2015, that NBC’s internal investigation did not bode well for him.
Now comes this:
Brian Williams, the embattled NBC news anchor whose credibility plummeted after he acknowledged exaggerating his role in a helicopter episode in Iraq, has been suspended for six months without pay, the network said on Tuesday night.
‘This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position,’ Deborah Turness, the president of NBC News.
(New York Times, February 10, 2015)
Except that this makes about as much sense as a wife telling her cheating husband to leave the marital home for six months, then inviting another man to perform all husbandly duties during his absence.
Williams is a fool if he thinks NBC will allow him to return to that anchor chair … ever. He has spent as much time on TV promoting himself as Kim Kardashian spends online promoting herself. Therefore, better than any other anchor, he knows that it’s out of sight, out of mind with viewers. And, even though a rich man, being fined roughly $5 million, which his suspension “without pay” constitutes, only adds insult to his professional injury.
In a similar vein, NBC would be foolish to allow him to return – even if ratings for Nightly News falter with Lester Holt, now his official substitute. After all, in the eyes of the millions who watched him on TV (as opposed to the tens of millions who gossiped about him on social media), Brian’s face has become indelibly associated with boldfaced lies. The breach of trust already documented is irreparable. And I remain convinced that NBC’s internal investigation is bound to uncover other lies and practices that will seal his fate.
This means that regaining his gravitas as a trustworthy news anchor will be even more daunting than Bill Cosby regaining his reputation as America’s favorite Dad. Indeed, with its top newsman now being outed as a pathological liar, so soon after its top entertainer was outed as a serial rapist, NBC can be forgiven for wanting to sever all ties with Williams, just as it has with Cosby.
Meanwhile, fake news anchor Jon Stewart shocked the world yesterday by announcing his retirement from The Daily Show.
In a surprise move, Jon Stewart has announced that he’s retiring as anchor of The Daily Show.
Stewart broke the news to his audience while taping Comedy Central’s satirical news program Tuesday.
(CBS News, February 10, 2015)
I get why so many now think Brian’s fall from grace is as fortuitous as it is serendipitous. Who better to replace Stewart…?
After all, one got the impression from his regular appearances on late-night comedy shows that Williams felt more comfortable in that setting than on the set of Nightly News. A report in today’s edition of the New York Times did nothing to dispel this impression. For it details how Williams lobbied to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show before NBC anointed comedian Jimmy Fallon as Leno’s successor (think The Late Shift).
And, given his penchant for telling lies, it would seem fitting, ironically enough, for Williams to begin presenting fake news not just to show off, but for his daily bread.
I fear, however, that he would be humbled by the world of difference between delivering scripted one-liners as a guest on late-night comedy shows and interviewing celebrities as a host of one of those shows, especially given that drawing laughs from some celebrities can be like drawing blood from a stone.
On the other hand, I hope Stewart resists all of the hype about a perfect symmetry that would have him shift from presenting fake news on The Daily Show to presenting straight news on Nightly News.
Not least because this presumes, mistakenly methinks, that Holt will prove an abject failure as his temporary replacement. But nothing would make a greater mockery of the journalistic and ethical principles that compelled NBC to suspend Williams than replacing him with a comedian like Stewart.
However, I suspect Stewart is smart enough to know that his shift from The Daily Show to Nightly News would probably make for even more cringeworthy television than Katie Couric’s shift from the perky Today Show to the serious Evening News. (Remember that?)
Frankly, NBC can do no better than to make Holt the permanent anchor. He’s demonstrably qualified. And he would break the monopoly White folks have held on the anchor chairs of network news for far too long.
But, mark my words, if NBC News does to Lester Holt what it did to Ann Curry (Remember that?), its president, Deborah Turness, would lose her job faster than the chairman of Sony Pictures, Amy Pascal, lost hers last month – after hackers leaked her racist e-mails about President Obama. (Remember that?)
Stewart won critical acclaim last year for his directorial debut in Rosewater. He would probably do well to pursue a career in film directing. For his part, Williams might want to pursue a career in fiction writing. After all, the tales of derring-do that got him suspended suggest that he could probably come up with storylines that make even writers like John LeCarre blush with envy.
NOTE: CBS News deserves honorable mention for not blurring the line between news and entertainment – the way every other network does these days, so wantonly. Indeed, the best thing NBC News can do to repair the damage to its reputation is to forbid its anchors and reporters from moonlighting (especially on social media) as celebrities.
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