My thoughts were along the same line as Joe's - this seems like a classic institutional "Cover Your Ass" move, as opposed to a thoughtful and proportional consequence. I am a little more tentative in this judgement however. It is possible that NBC's initial investigation into the accuracy of William's actual reporting (as in some of the Katrina statements) has given them reason to suspect misrepresentation, but they will need more time to get to the bottom of it. Under those circumstances, I could see them wanting to issue a pretty stern punishment ASAP, leaving themselves the option to actually fire him later if they have enough evidence to show that he substantially misreported events from Katrina that he knew or should have known were false.It is also possible their preliminary investigation has found direct evidence that Williams' Iraq memory was not just flawed, but a result of conscious lying.
If we assume that the behavior that is being punished is limited to 1) what has already been made public about his faulty memory of being shot down in Iraq and 2) A more general tendency to get too folksy and loosey goosey when appearing on entertainment programs then I the six month suspension is wildly excessive. I am quite sure that a majority of the people who have anchored any one of the three network newscasts since their inception have mis-remembered key and dramatic personal details from the location of important events they were covering, most often with the effect of portraying themselves in a more flattering or central role, These people have just been lucky enough to have not repeated these inaccurate stories on television in the internet age. NBC is in danger of setting an impossible standard, which will require periodic spanking and termination of its news staff going forward. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote: > I spent about four minutes last night processing this before the Stewart > news broke, at which point my Facebook News Feed blew up. > > Here, for me, are the key two paragraphs from the NYT write up: > > Ms. Turness said in a memo to NBC News staff that executives decided to > suspend Mr. Williams because he misrepresented the Iraq episode on the > “Nightly News” broadcast. She said that executives also were concerned > about the way he portrayed his reporting away from his newscasts. That > includes his descriptions of reporting on Hurricane Katrina as well as > other coverage. > > “We have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while > Brian was talking about his experiences in the field,” she said. > > I am reading this as the suspension is for the 2015 NN hockey game > incident and the incidents that have come to light as seemingly everybody > except my son decided to fact-check everything Williams has said on any > non-NBC Nightly News medium since the dawn of television. > > Based on that, this is almost on par with the initial suspension for Ray > Rice for absurdity. PGage has discussed the memory thing repeatedly. And if > you're going to go back that far to discuss questionable conversations, at > some point you've reached a proverbial statute of limitations. > > This smacks of an organization that couldn't figure out what to do, so > they decided to arbitrarily punish him (and, it's worth noting, they > reserve the right to continue this, as the investigation is ongoing) > because he went into a situation where there wasn't any rules and the > optics were getting bad. I actually would've been able to buy termination > (even though I think that would've been too severe) before this. This seems > to be some weird discipline that fundamentally screws Williams while > "protecting" a brand that's barely worth anything. > > On Tue Feb 10 2015 at 7:05:07 PM Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Six month suspension without pay, per Brian Stelter via NBC sources >> >> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015, 09:00 Bob Jersey <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> He apologized Wednesday (4) >>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33RSg9CBtUY> ('toob) for having said >>> on NBC's telecast of an NHL game as part of a ceremony honouring a >>> servicemember* -* and in 2013 to Dave - that a chopper he was in while >>> covering Iraq fighting in 2003 got hit by enemy fire... the US >>> military-newser Stars and Stripes busted him >>> <http://www.stripes.com/news/us/nbc-s-brian-williams-recants-iraq-story-after-soldiers-protest-1.327792> >>> (link) after gripes from three actual occupants of the attacked craft that >>> he was in a different chopper... >>> >>> B >>> >>> -- >>> -- >>> TV or Not TV .... 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