I'm sorry, but I've been thinking about this much more than either it deserves or I care about what happens to Williams. It has to do with what's appropriate for a newscaster.
There's are two components to the reporter's storytelling: venue and content. If Williams is hanging with his buddies at the firehouse*, he can tell any story he wants. They may love it, or they may roll their eyes and say "Here he goes telling us about how he killed Bin Laden again," but there's no harm. Even if it ends up in the Post, all he has to say is that he's not reporting, he's just entertaining friends. Once he goes into a more public forum, though, the calculus changes. When Tom Brokaw goes on Letterman and tells about a fishing trip to Patagonia, there's no problem if he changes details to make the story more entertaining, as long as it's just about him and his pals. If local authorities are involved, Brokaw then needs to be reasonably accurate. (It's the difference between a private complaint from a friend and a public complaint from an entity he might have to cover in another context.) And in the segment where he's discussing the news of the day, he's acting as a reporter, with all the obligations to truthfulness that entails, even if the conclusions he expresses turn out to be wrong. Once Williams is telling Dave about his adventures as a reporter, he loses some latitude in making the story more entertaining. And on the Nightly News, any untrue statements affect the credibility of the newscast. In fact, I don't think the complaints about the helicopter tale became public until Williams told the story on the Nightly News, even if there had been complaints to Brian and/or NBC when he told the story on the Late Show. And it doesn't matter whether the misstatements were deliberate or a false memory; the questions it raises about Williams' future reporting are the same. *-Sadly, I'm tempted to add an "assuming that's true" to the firehouse mention. -- -- 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.
