Lying Brian under fire for Iraq claims
NBC is investigating evening news anchor Brian Williams’s recent portrayal of his reporting in Iraq in 2003, according to an internal memo.
Williams, whose show is the mostwatched nightly news broadcast in the US, is under scrutiny for on-air claims that a military helicopter he was travelling in was shot and forced down in the Iraqi desert in 2003. He retracted his account and apologised after servicemen disputed his story.
“We have a team dedicated to gathering the facts to help us make sense of all that has transpired,” NBC News President Deborah Turness wrote in the memo, distributed by NBC News. “We’re working on what the best next steps are — and when we have something to communicate we will of course share it with you.”
Williams anchored NBC Nightly News on Friday evening as usual and didn’t mention the controversy.
Williams’ admission that he didn’t take fire aboard a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 puts NBC Universal in a difficult position about how to handle the fallout.
Firing Williams, who’s sat behind the anchor desk of NBC Nightly News since 2004, raises the risk that the show will lose viewers and advertising dollars for the broadcaster, owned by Comcast Corp. Keeping him on could bruise the network’s credibility, which might also hurt ratings.
The programme’s audience — 9.3 million viewers a night compared with 8.7 million for ABC’s World News Tonight and 7.3 million for the CBS Evening News, according to Nielsen data — means NBC is able to charge more for advertising. Firing a lead anchor is no small matter, said Al Tompkins, senior faculty for broadcasting at the Poynter Institute.
“Anchors become iconic,” Mr Tompkins said. “They’re expected to influence the culture of that network. The investment in any anchor is huge, that’s why they get paid millions of dollars.”
Williams’ salary is US$13 million (424 million baht) a year, according to the website Celebrity Net Worth.
Williams apologised on air on Wednesday for incorrectly saying last week that a helicopter he travelled on, while reporting on the Iraq War in 2003, had been forced down after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Williams made the same assertion in a 2013 interview on the Late Show With David Letterman.
NBC’s first priority should be transparency, and provide answers as soon as possible, Mr Tompkins said.
“The hole’s going to get deeper if NBC doesn’t respond pretty clearly and pretty forcefully with some facts,” he said. “We have a bunch of people telling wildly different stories,” he said. “It’s a knowable fact what happened.”
The imbroglio was among the top 10 trending topics on Friday on Twitter. Under hashtags #BrianWilliamsMemories and #BrianWilliamsMisremembers, users pretending to be the anchor tweeted about fake acts of heroism.
NBC will probably take time to thoroughly ascertain the facts, said Barbara Cochran, a professor at the University of Missouri’s journalism school and a former executive producer of NBC’s Meet the Press programme.
Changing anchors can lead viewers to switch loyalties and sample other media outlets, said Ms Cochran, who also served as a vice-president at CBS News.
“For an anchor to establish trust takes a long, long time,” Ms Cochran said. “With the investment the network has made, they’re not going to back away in a big hurry.”
Following the initial concerns, new questions have been raised about Williams’s telling of his experience during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He has said he saw dead bodies float by in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The Turness memo didn’t mention Katrina.
In a story covered on NBC Nightly News last week, Williams took Sgt Maj Tim Terpak, who retired with three bronze stars, to a hockey game at Madison Square Garden where the veteran received a standing ovation. During the piece, Williams said his helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
“I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said in Wednesday’s telecast. “I want to apologise.”
The aircraft Williams and his team were in were following helicopters that came under fire, NBC and Williams reported, correcting the original story. Sgt Maj Terpak led a unit that protected the newsman while they were stranded in the desert.