Brian Williams says tales ‘ego driven’
Broadcaster will return to work, for MSNBC, in August.
In his first interview since being removed as anchor of “Nightly News” on NBC, Brian Williams called the last several months “torture” and owned up to telling stories that were not true.
“This came from clearly a bad place, a bad urge inside of me,” Williams told his colleague Matt Lauer, an anchor of “Today” on NBC, during a recorded interview broadcast Friday. “This was clearly ego driven, the desire to better my role in a story I was already in.”
NB C announced Thursday that Williams would not return to being evening news anchor after suspending him in February. He will return to work in A ugust as an anchor of breaking news and special reports for the M SNB C cable news network.
Williams, once considered one of the nation’s most respected broadcast journalists, had his reputation sullied after a controversy erupted this year over his exaggerations of an experience during a helicopter attack in Iraq. T he interview broadcast Friday was part of an apology tour that started this week in efforts to rebuild trust and respect in Williams among viewers and NB C staff members.
“Why is it when we are trying to say, ‘I am sorry’ that we can’t come out and say, ‘I’m sorry’?” he said in the interview. “Looking back, it is very clear I never intended to.It got mixed up.It got turned around in my mind.”
Later in the interview, he said he was sorry for what had happened.
“I know why people feel the way they do,” he said. “I get this. I am responsible for this .I am sorry for what happened here. I am different as a result, and I expect to be held to a different standard.”
Lauer, who said that neither he nor Williams had agreed to any conditions for the interview, repeatedly pressed Williams on whether he “lied.” Williams would not go that far.
Lauer asked if Williams gave thought at the time of the controversy of going on air and directly saying “I lied” when he went on the air and apologized for the helicopter incident.
“I know people would see it that way,” Williams said.“It is not what happened.”
“What happened is clearly part of my ego getting the better of me to put myself in a better light to appear better than I was,” Williams added. “That is the process here.”
Lauer asked if the outcome would have been different and people would have forgiven Williams sooner had he gone on the air at the time of the helicopter incident and said he had “lied” rather than used words like “conflated.”
“I think, perhaps, yes,” Williams said.“It is so clear to me that I said things that were wrong. I told stories that were wrong.It wasn’t from a place where I was trying to use my job or title to mislead.”
In response to a question about whether the fabrication of the helicopter incident was conscious, Williams said that he was “not trying to mislead people; that to me is a huge difference here.” H e said that he had told the story about the helicopter incident correctly for years before he told it incorrectly.
NB C conducted an investigation into Williams that was not made public. The network said in a news release T hursday that Williams had “made a number of inaccurate statements” about his experiences in the field.
Lauer asked about whether there were other stories that Williams had admitted telling about other news experiences in which he was involved that were not true.
“It is clear in many cases years later, I said things that were wrong,” Williams said. “O ne is too much. A ny number north of zero is too many.”
Williams did not directly address a question about whether he wanted to correct the record of other circumstances.
“I would like to take this opportunity to say that what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been fixed and has been dealt with,” he said. “Going forward, there are going to be different rules of the road.”
Williams called his suspension “a time of realization trying to find out in me what changed.” H e said that during the suspension, he had listened to what amounted to “black box recordings” of his career in an attempt to figure out how it happened.
“I was reading these newspaper stories, not liking the person I was reading about,” he said. “T hese statements I made, I own this, I own up to this.”
“I was reading these newspaper stories, not liking the person I was reading about,” he said. “T hese statements I made, I own this, I own up to this.”
Williams tried to draw a distinction between the stories that he told on air and outside of his news broadcasts.
“In our work, I have always treated words very carefully,” he said.“It is clear that after work, when I got out of the building, when I got out of that realm, I used a double standard. Something changed, and I was sloppy, and I said things that weren’t true. Looking back, that is plain.”