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While the media and new and old media class is waiting for the other patent-leather shoe to drop, the case of NBC Anchor Brian Williams and his “misremebering” being shot down in a helicopter seems to get curiouser and curiouser. NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen, whose website Pressthink.org is required reading for anyone interested in media, has done three posts that make it clear that this story has legs — and questions galore.

And now Brian Williams’ rating in a poll on trustworthiness has taken a dive so breathtakingly straight down and deep that he deserves an Olympics medal.

For instance, in his latest post, Rosen says that it now appears that “the ‘conflation’ that Brian Williams described in his apology last week began with the first report in 2003, and built from there. Other NBC people were involved from the beginning. The question is why.” As time went on the story became embellished more and more with Williams being at the center of being in a helicopter he contended had been shot down — a contention now acknowledged to be false.

It’s true that over time Brian Williams moved himself closer to the center of the story so that it “became something that happened to him.” But this motion — the one percent enhancements — began earlier than most of the reporting has so far said…. the “moving to the middle” [of the story]…began: in September of 2003.

Go to the post to read it in full.

In an earlier post he noted that one thing was bothering him: why wasn’t Williams leading on this story? An anchor is supposed to be a news leader, and also a brand for the network:

I figured out what’s bothering me about the story that has engulfed NBC News, “after the public symbol of the network, anchor Brian Williams, faced a torrent of derision and criticism for telling a story about his wartime reporting that has proved to be untrue.” (Washington Post.) I don’t know that he deliberately lied to puff himself up and receive “stolen valor.” Nor do I know that ordinary “could happen to anyone” memory failure accounts for it. Both interpretations are popular online. I’m not persuaded of either one, but I can’t disprove them.

I do know this: since it became clear that Williams had created big problems for himself and his network by telling a false story, he has not led. Brian_Williams_by_David_ShankboneAnd that is the job of an anchorman, if the anchorman really is what he is supposed to be— not just a news reader, celebrity and Jon Stewart guest but a kind of super-journalist, able to host the nightly news (a job in itself), act as managing editor of the broadcast (a job in itself), report stories from the field, preside over special events like election night and serve as the embodiment of the news division’s mystical compact with the viewing public, the person in whom trust is lodged and then expressed to the rest of the reporting and producing corps. That’s the job: face of the brand, human figure in a whole architecture of trust. Williams reveled in it, and spoke many times of what an awesome responsibility it was for a kid from Jersey.

AND:

Think about it: The Face of the Brand lets other news organizations re-report his faulty stories? Journalistically speaking, how does that work? It doesn’t. Too late now, though. The apology Williams gave has been called into grave question. Other newsrooms have led the charge on the story. NBC has an internal investigation underway to figure out how bad the situation is. And Politico is reporting: “Brian Williams is in serious trouble.”

The trouble has been caused not only by his fictionalizing of a helicopter ride 12 years ago, but by a failure actually to be what the anchorman position calls for. Not a great talk show guest, but a great leader

Read the post in its entirety.

A day after writing that post, he was further pinpointing this curious story:
Whatever that is, it’s not misremembering. It’s more active than that. So is getting David Letterman to ask him about an episode from ten years ago. And getting Madison Square garden to honor one of the soldiers who protected him in the desert, which created footage that could be packaged into a story for NBC Nightly News, where Williams is managing editor.

You can see why the soldiers who were there got fed up with this and took to Facebook. It’s more than misremembering or embellishing. It’s looking for opportunities to tell the story and, in the telling of it, switching the focus to the military while an accidental payload — Brian Williams under fire in Iraq — is dropped. “You’re a true journalistic war hero, and I’m just a dumb ass,” Letterman says as they clown about it before one of the commercial breaks. Earlier in the show, Williams had protested when Letterman expressed admiration for his courage under fire, re-directing attention to the brave volunteers in the U.S. army. By the second time, he says nothing. He just accepts hero status. In good fun.

If people from NBC were enlisted in the mounting of these fictions, if they had doubts but swallowed them, if they protested but were not heard — all questions for the investigation — then Brian Williams may not be the only one in peril.

Read that post in full, as well.

So clearly it wasn’t just Williams out there solo who absolutely shocked the network with his admission that he was memory (or truth) challenged.

Now he is so far down in a poll on trustworthiness that any day he’ll see a sign saying “WELCOME TO THE SOUTH POLE”

If Brian Williams’s future as the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” rests on his trustworthiness and ratings, new research delivered some sobering news on Monday.

Before Mr. Williams apologized for exaggerating an account of a forced helicopter landing during the Iraq war, he ranked as the 23rd-most-trusted person in the country — on par with Denzel Washington, Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts. On Monday, he ranked as No. 835.

That puts him on the same level as the actor Gene Hackman, the basketball player Russell Westbrook and Willie Robertson, who stars in A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” reality series, according to the Marketing Arm, a research firm whose celebrity index is closely watched by advertisers and media and marketing executives.

The new research came as NBC tried to decide whether Mr. Williams can continue as anchor and managing editor of its evening news broadcast. The network’s internal investigation into Mr. Williams was underway Monday, with NBC News reporters contacting other staff members who have worked with Mr. Williams as well as soldiers involved in the Iraq helicopter incident, according to people who have been contacted.

And now, according to The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, NBC officials are panicked:

In interviews with The Daily Beast, NBC News insiders—who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and compensation—expressed shock, mixed with gallows humor, that Williams has fallen so far so fast—astonishingly enough, due to tall tales and shaggy dog stories that the anchor has told publicly, notably on his own newscast.
Only two months ago, he’d signed a five-year contract at a reported $10 million a year. But since last Wednesday, when the military-focused newspaper Stars and Stripes published a damning story that Williams has repeatedly embellished his 2003 war-reporting experiences in Iraq, his perch at the top of the network news ziggurat is suddenly at grave risk.

“The Comcast people have a track record of marching out all these million-dollar figures to buy their way through their problems,” says an NBC News veteran, referring to the Philadelphia-headquartered cable television and broadcasting behemoth, the news division’s parent company. “[Fired Today cohost] Ann Curry cost them a bundle. [Fired Meet the Press moderator] David Gregory cost them a bundle. [Former news president] Steve Capus cost them a bundle. But Brian Williams is different—he’s a $50 million problem. If it was a lot less than that, you’d have to wonder whether they’d keep him.”

…..“My God, what’s happening to Brian is in the Zeitgeist,” marveled an NBC News wag on Monday. “He’s trumping Bruce Jenner on social media. I mean, cross-dressing Bruce Jenner killed somebody, but Brian Williams is still trending.”

The Daily Beast reports on speculation about who might replace Williams, if he steps down or is pushed.

It also notes that Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart threw some barbs at Williams but also ” but saved his sharpest barbs for hypocritical journalists who are trashing the anchor for trivial fibs—never mind that the some of the very same media heavyweights who are judging Williams uncritically spread major Bush administration falsehoods that ended up entangling the United States in a prolonged, costly, and unjustified war in Iraq.” And that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough also defended him saying “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

But here’s a saying for Mr. Scarborough: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” — and should also be good for the peacock.

I’m not the slightest bit surprised that Stewart in this case would try to balance his criticism of Williams by pointing to the media: Williams has been on his program and is known to him personally– and to Scarborough. It’s akin to when Hollywood types defend one of their own bigwigs who are in the same elite show biz class because they know them and give them a bit or more of the benfit of the doubt.

But it’s unlikely they’d be as charitable if this was a local anchor or someone they never met who was not on the same professional level.

If they were a news consumer they might expect more.

And if they were a journalism professor like Rosen, they might want answer to questions, rather than seemingly giving Williams a pass.

Now the question is: can and will NBC let Williams stay where he is?

Or is he — and at this point the NBC brand — damaged goods?

graphic via shutterstock.com

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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