SHOULD BRIAN WILLIAMS RETURN AS A NETWORK NEWS ANCHOR?

 

Unfortunately, news anchors don’t have the luxury of playing with their news stories.

As a political opinion writer, it is my job to state my personal opinion on any number of political subjects, and I am allowed the flexibility to offer my opinions in any way I choose.  That’s the wonderful part about having the word “opinion” in my title as a writer.  A fictional novel writer is at the far-end of the writer’s scale where they can develop their stories totally from what comes into their mind at any given time. 

But when you are a news anchor, as is NBC’s Brian Williams, all you have to support your very high-paid position is the trust those have in you, as they tune in for their fountain of daily evening news. 

The great CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite, in his day, was so well respected that he literally turned the nation around in its opinion of the United States being at war in Vietnam. 

At that time, even though there were the many demonstrations going on in the US against the War in Vietnam, overall the general American public still supported the nation fighting for the democratic freedom of the South Vietnamese.  But after Walter had visited the war zone and personally talked with those young American soldiers, fighting and dying, and with their military commanders in the field, the news anchor Cronkite returned to the US.  Upon his return, in his first national broadcast, he made the following ending statement that eventually helped the nations viewer's opinion of the war make a 180° turn.

“To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.”

In that one nights’ broadcast, due to the viewing nation’s respect for Walter Cronkite always giving the public the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he eventually helped turn the nation’s opinion on the Vietnam war around.

Today, as the cable TV networks have continued to multiply, you have seen that due to the Internet (where everything is NOT true), we now also have organizations that do nothing but spend their time trying to check the truth in actual news statements.  These organizations try to make sure that we are hearing the truth from these multiple news sources, so they now will rate the level of “truth” in these news source’s  statements.  Today, it is now so defined, that the level of truth of each news source statement is judged on the following six levels of truth:

·       Totally True

·       Mostly True

·       ½ True

·       Mostly False

·       False

·       Totally False, (A Pants-on-Fire-Lie)

The reason that this change for needed “truth-in-news” ratings had come about, was due to all the falsehoods that came in 2000, from the presidential campaign ads and from the on-going news from the so called Fox News Channel, with their twisted and questionable approach to presenting the news.

But one thing that has stayed mostly the same is that the main national newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.) and the broadcast TV networks still do their best to qualify what they write and offer to the public as “news”.  Both of these news outlets still require multiple sources to confirm what is offered as “news”, or they will report that the information came from "such and such source, but could not be confirmed".

Brian Williams was one of those broadcast news anchors that eventually grew to earn multi-millions in income and he was considered much like Cronkite, as a well-respected deliverer of the truth in the evening news.

Unfortunately, last week, Williams had to apologize regarding a 2003 incident that occurred while he was in Iraq. Williams had said that the Army Chinook helicopter he was riding in was forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade.  Truthfully, his helicopter wasn’t the one that was hit.

Williams had initially reported on MSNBC that he was flying at about 1,500 feet and could see two rockets launched from about six miles away.  A month later, the story changed when he told Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart that rockets passed 1,500 feet below his helicopter. Then in 2007, he told an audience at Fairfield University that the rockets sailed just beneath him.

As we age, we are all aware that human nature allows that all of our stories get better in their re-telling, as most human beings tend to do. Our recollection of traumatic events is often flawed in some part because basic fear alters the brain and those memories. Whether one is hit by a rocket or not, surely the terror of flying around where rockets are being shot at you from nearby can magnify and distort those events.

This is not being said to make excuses for Williams, but to put some possible perspective into this particular case.  Williams wasn’t officially reporting the news in telling these renditions of what occurred as he was talking to an audience about his war stories. Is an anchor always an anchor, or does Brian Williams get to be just plain Brian on occasion?

Unfortunately, I’m afraid that for Mr. Williams, when he is talking where there is an audience and where he is being recorded, he is not allowed the same flexibility that we and our neighbors have when telling our own war stories at a weekend backyard party.

Just as Walter Cronkite’s comments, opinions and statements were looked at as gospel, a long-time respected news anchor such as Brian Williams is considered in that same category.  And there aren’t that many “talking head” news providers that are considered in that special group.

When you represent one of the three main broadcast news networks, NBC, ABC, CBS, or the respected cable networks of: CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, BBC, NPR and some others, you do not have the luxury of playing with your war stories.  I’m afraid Brian Williams has now had to learn that the hard way.

Will the public ever be able to trust Brian Williams again, or will no matter what the subject is, will there always be that question-of-truth in the back of the viewer’s minds?

After his six months suspension without pay from NBC, both he and they will have to make that difficult decision.  I personally doubt that he will be back in his same role at NBC.

Copyright G.Ater  2015