The Brian Williams fiasco keeps ?getting worse.
After apologizing for his exaggerated involvement in a 2003 helicopter episode in Iraq, the “Nightly News” anchor has been suspended by NBC for six months without pay.
Once a beacon of credibility and one of the only news anchors who delivered capital-N news without spin, Williams has now plummeted into the depths of untruth once reserved for those among the likes of James Frey and Richard ?Nixon.
But we, the members of the Editorial Board, think everybody is being a little hard on him.
Williams is being punished for something news anchors have been doing for years without any ?consequences: exaggerating.
He’s a scapegoat.
Television news, especially on ?network television, is dying. Our generation doesn’t really watch TV for news.
Thus, anchors have a responsibility to create an interesting persona to bring in viewership. Nobody’s going to watch some robot devoid of personality deliver the day’s top stories.
In developing a personality, anchors often insert themselves into ?stories.
In old journalism, this was a ?no-no. Anchors were supposed to remain impartial at all costs. But that doesn’t pull in ratings ?anymore.
Inserting oneself into stories can cause some problems, however, and Williams is proof of this.
Quite a few journalists do this nowadays, and many of them have done things far worse than what Williams did. Just watch Fox News or MSNBC for 10 minutes, and you’ll see what we’re talking about.
That spin — which is often outright lying — you see on cable news networks every day is much more concerning than an isolated incident of exaggerating one’s personal ?experience.
And something important nobody seems to be writing about is how Williams fessed up. He admitted his mistake and offered a sincere apology on air.
We cannot think of an instance when Fox News has ever made an ?apology. Cable news is different than ?network news. The anchors on Fox and MSNBC are commentators.
This title purportedly gives them more freedom when it comes to delivering the news, and this freedom often comes in the form of spin, which, as we’ve already established, is just a ?fancy word for lying.
Rush Limbaugh, for example, has lied numerous times on air.
In 2012 he said ObamaCare constituted the largest tax increase ever, which was a lie. But he’s still on the air. How did we come up with this line between the behavior that’s acceptable for network news anchors and cable news anchors? It seems very arbitrary.
Fox News claims to be news right in its name, yet we give them the leeway that comes with commentary.
This doesn’t make any sense.
Brian Williams did something wrong — that is indisputable. It hurts to be lied to, especially by someone you think you can trust.
But he’s not the only person on TV who has lied to the American public.
Let’s hold those people responsible for their actions, too, and make a joint effort to avoid these instances in the ?future.
