Compared to Cronkite & Morrow Williams is NOT a news anchor. Unfortunately he is nothing more than a pitch man for BigPharma fixes for dry vagina's and limp penises ;; just to name a few a long list of "ask your doctor" messages that occupy close to 50% of the network news slots. The other 50% is baked in chaos, drama, tear jerk trivia with a pinch of information that Cronkite and/or Morrow would call news. Imagine Cronkite reporting on the assassination of JFK having to break away for 30/60 second sales pitch for a "time is right" drug.
In exaggerating the news Williams was doing what he is paid to do; entertain the crowd, the majority of which are brain dead and need a constant jolt of "breaking news" just to keep them focused till the next sales pitch.
Want 100% news? PBS is the only island of real news in this waste land of faux/entertainment news.
Mr. Williams has not addressed the issue publicly since Wednesday, when he apologized on his newscast for embellishing an account of an incident in 2003; over the years he came to say that he was in a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire, an assertion he now says is not true. On his newscasts Thursday and Friday, he did not mention the controversy.
If Mr. Williams is forced to step down, it would be a huge blow to the news division, which is in a cutthroat ratings race with the rival networks. In this season to date, NBC has averaged 9.3 million total viewers for its nightly broadcast, compared with 8.7 million for ABC and 7.3 million for CBS, according to Nielsen.
For NBC, Mr. Williams is more than just a nightly news anchor. He’s a bona fide celebrity on par with Jimmy Fallon, Matt Lauer and Bob Costas in representing the face of the broadcast network. Should Mr. Williams be forced to step down, it is not clear who a successor would be, industry executives said.
Creating a succession plan has not been a top priority at the network as it has focused on sorting out issues with its “Today” show. Mr. Williams has been viewed as a block of stability, and in December the network extended his contract, with the terms reported to be as much as $10 million per year for five years.
Some media critics and TV industry insiders questioned NBC’s plan to conduct an internal investigation rather than work with an outside group.
“Internal investigations are inherently suspect because NBC has a literal financial investment in Brian Williams and his brand,” Mr. Feldstein said. “They have been paying him millions of dollars a year and spending millions more to promote his image as their public face, as their brand, specifically promoting his integrity as a source for news.”
In other media scandals, Mr. Feldstein said, changes in personnel and practice mostly came after external investigations.
Others in the TV news business questioned the point of the investigation, given that Mr. Williams already admitted that he had made false claims about his experiences in Iraq.
News of the internal investigation was first reported by The Daily News of New York.
Mr. Williams now admits that his portrayal of the helicopter journey was misleading, and that he had been on a different helicopter, behind the one that was hit. He said he had “conflated” the two versions, and apologized.
It’s not clear whether other people at NBC were aware that Mr. Williams’s version of the events was inaccurate.
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