The LA Times absolutely nailed my thoughts from then (which projects to now) yesterday:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-brian-williams-personal-branding-conflict-20150208-column.html On Sun, Feb 8, 2015, 14:05 PGage <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Jon Delfin <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 2:37 PM, Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote: The problem is, he's not an entertainer. He's a newsman. This substantially undermines his credibility. Everything he does with Jimmy Fallon and Jon Stewart undermines his credibility. This is just another type of thing. Joe did begin this thread linking the incident to his earlier point that Williams has crossed over the line too often to being an entertaining raconteur on late night shows. I don't think I agree with the extreme form of this argument as made by Jon above (Rather and Brokaw and even - especially - Murrow spent their fair amount of time on the entertainment side), but there is, or should be, a line, and Williams may have crossed it one too many times. We have a different set of criteria for the accuracy of a story a friend tells us at a cocktail party, vs a story being reported by the Anchor of NBC News. As far as I know Williams did not report his helicopter story on his newscast, but he did it enough times, on television, wearing his hat as NBC News Anchor, that it does muddy his credibility. Especially because the story in question touches on a major news event, that he was covering as a journalist, and which he seemed to use be using to in some way burnish his reputation as a war correspondent. My concern is not that he is a liar (I actually doubt that he is). My concern is the he used very poor judgement in not checking this story before repeating it in contexts which might affect his credibility. I think we can legitimately ask if he is so loose with this accuracy for this kind of thing, how careful is he with other facts? I don't think this one incident is sufficient for him to lose his job, but it should be taken seriously. One reason I am not happy with the public tidal wave assuming he lied is that I think it misses the more important point about credibility of journalists being tied to the care they take in checking their facts. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
