Guest callipygian Posted February 8, 2015 Posted February 8, 2015 Brian Williams On Iraq, In 2007: 'I Looked Down The Tube Of An RPG That Had Been Fired At Us' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/07/brian-williams-rpg_n_6637014.html Quote
Guest callipygian Posted February 8, 2015 Posted February 8, 2015 BUT....There was, this kinda fun moment.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCeIgt7hMs ......Just don't play it backwards. Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 8, 2015 Members Posted February 8, 2015 Speaking of Uncle Walter, he certainly was biased also. It seems we are most willing to "trust" those who seem to have the same bias as we do. One quote I heard recently and I think the author is the "famous" anon is, those who recognize that they are biased are the ones most likely to try to deal fairly regarding same. As they say about pols and talking heads, the way to tell if they are lying is if their lips are moving. Best regards, RA1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 8, 2015 Posted February 8, 2015 The New York Post is what it is, but makes some good points: http://nypost.com/2015/02/08/we-shouldnt-believe-williams-lie-was-an-innocent-mistake/ Quote
Guest callipygian Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 Brian Williams won't keep his date with David Letterman (DUH) http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/08/media/brian-williams-letterman/index.html?iid=HP_LN Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 Dowd is pretty harsh. And accurate. Anchors Aweigh Maureen Dowd WASHINGTON -- THIS was a bomb that had been ticking for a while. NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division. But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top, as one NBC News reporter put it. It seemed pathological because Williams already had the premier job, so why engage in résumé inflation? And you dont get those jobs because of your derring-do. When Williams was declared the hair apparent to Tom Brokaw in 1995, hailed by Jay Leno as NBCs stud muffin, I did a column wondering why TV news programs only hired pretty white male clones. I asked Williams if he was an anchor android. Not that Im aware of, he said gamely, in his anchor-desk baritone. I can deny the existence of a factory in the American Midwest that puts out people like me. Williams told friends last week that he felt anguished, coming under fire for his false story of coming under fire. Although the NBC anchor had repeated the Iraq war tall tale, ever more baroquely, for more than a decade, when he cited it on his Jan. 30 broadcast during a segment about going to a Rangers game with a retired, decorated soldier who had been on the ground that day when he landed, Williams got smacked down on Facebook. A crew member from a Chinook flying ahead of Williams, who was involved in the 2003 firefight, posted, Sorry dude, I dont remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened. Stars and Stripes ran with it, and, by Saturday, Williams announced that he was stepping down for several days. Social media the genre that helped make the TV evening news irrelevant by showing us that we dont need someone to tell us every night what happened that day was gutting the institution further. Although Williamss determination to wrap himself in others valor is indefensible, it seems almost redundant to gnaw on his bones, given the fact that the Internet has already taken down a much larger target: the long-ingrained automatic impulse to turn on the TV when news happens. Although there was much chatter about the revered anchor and the moral authority of the networks, does anyone really feel that way anymore? Frothy morning shows long ago became the more important anchoring real estate, garnering more revenue and subsidizing the news division. One anchor exerted moral authority once and that was Walter Cronkite, because he risked his career to go on TV and tell the truth about the fact that we were losing the Vietnam War. But TV news now is rife with cat, dog and baby videos, weather stories and narcissism. And even that fare caused trouble for Williams when he reported on a video of a pig saving a baby goat, admitting we have no way of knowing if its real, and then later had to explain that it wasnt. The nightly news anchors are not figures of authority. Theyre part of the entertainment, branding and cross-promotion business. Former ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer trended on Facebook for reportedly scoring the first interview about Bruce Jenners gender odyssey. When current ABC News anchor David Muir was still a correspondent, some NBC News reporters had a drinking game about how many times he put himself in the shot and how many times his shirt was unbuttoned. As the late-night comic anchors got more pointed and edgy with the news, the real anchors mimicked YouTube. Williams did a piece on his daughter Allisons casting in an NBC production of Peter Pan. And Muir aired an Access Hollywood-style segment with Bradley Cooper. As the performers Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher were doing more serious stuff, the supposedly serious guys were doing more performing. The anchors pack their Hermès ties and tight T-shirts and fly off to hot spots for the performance aspect, because the exotic and dangerous backdrops confer the romance of Hemingway covering the Spanish Civil War. Oliver, who has made waves with pieces on financial chicanery in the Miss America contest and the corporate players trying to undermine net neutrality, told The Verge that he is hiring more researchers with backgrounds in investigative journalism. Meanwhile, in an interview with Fusion, Muir acted out the facial expressions he uses during his broadcast: the listening face, the really listening face, and the really concerned face. All that was missing was Blue Steel. With no pushback from the brass at NBC, Williams has spent years fervently courting celebrity, as The Hollywood Reporter put it, guest starring on 30 Rock, slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon and regaling David Letterman with his faux heroics: Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47. As his profession shrinks and softens, Williams felt compelled to try to steal the kind of glory that can only be earned the hard way. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-anchors-aweigh.html?_r=0&referrer= lookin 1 Quote
Members lookin Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 When Williams was declared the hair apparent to Tom Brokaw in 1995, . . . Spellcheck gem-o-the-day, and many thanks as it got me wondering whatever became of Donald Trump's sons. Donald, Jr., 37, heir apparent Eric, 31, hair apparent AdamSmith and ihpguy 2 Quote
Guest callipygian Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 Spellcheck gem-o-the-day, and many thanks as it got me wondering whatever became of Donald Trump's sons. Donald, Jr., 37, heir apparent Eric, 31, hair apparent Haha! Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 "Hair apparent" might be logical. After all, the impeccable hair is almost as important as the ability to read a teleprompter. Best regards, RA1 Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 Sorry but I read lookin before MS. Dowd. Best regards, RA1 MsGuy 1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 Sorry but I read lookin before MS. Dowd. A meet & fitting order of precedence. MsGuy 1 Quote
Members MsGuy Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 +1 for both RA1 & AS. Lookin rules. AdamSmith 1 Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 Today would they call Laugh In LOL? Best regards, RA MsGuy 1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 Today would they call Laugh In LOL? Maybe that closes the loop back to Brian Williams' fate... https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gEWEOO_a73Y Fun reminiscence... https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_hhnX_vDL4o Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 I only wish my own life was brought to me in "living color". Best regards, RA1 Quote
Members lookin Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 Sorry but I read lookin before MS. Dowd. So did I, sorry to say. Well, simultaneously would be more apt, as it an opening like that just doesn't come along every day. Not at all proud of this, but I guess my journalistic cynicism has become so advanced that I was quite willing to believe that both Maureen Dowd and the New York Times had jumped the shark and let a typo through. It was another one of those too-good-to-be-true moments, right up there with Harper Lee's release of a second novel, although that one may yet prove out. In the meantime, thanks for the votes of confidence. Going forward, though, my plan is to rely on others to separate the wheat from the chaff. When AdamSmith says it's in, it's in. Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 When AdamSmith says it's in, it's in. I can work with that. Quote
Members RA1 Posted February 9, 2015 Members Posted February 9, 2015 Not to worry. Very often, OUR point of view is more to the whatever point than bloggers, columnists and others. I think we all appreciate your POV more than most. Keep on keeping on, as we say in the South. Best regards, RA1 lookin 1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 9, 2015 Posted February 9, 2015 NBC’s outsized Tom Brokaw factor As Brian Williams flounders, his powerful predecessor stays neutral. By Mike Allen politico.com2/9/15 8:31 AM ESTUpdated 2/9/15 12:10 PM ESTWith America’s #1 newscast at stake, NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke held a meeting with NBC News executives at his house yesterday to discuss the next steps in the Brian Williams crisis. Williams still hopes to survive, and is considering the timing and venue for his next apology. But his cancellation yesterday of an appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” scheduled for Thursday, was a sign that the agony – for Williams and the network – may be prolonged.A potent background voice in these high-stakes deliberations is Tom Brokaw, Williams’s predecessor in the “Nightly News” chair from 1982 to 2004, and one of the country’s most respected voices, period.“Tom makes his views known at all levels of the organization – corporate on down,” said a network executive who has worked closely with both Brokaw and Williams. “Tom was surprised by a lot of the things Brian has said, and has become increasingly critical through the years.”In November, President Obama awarded Brokaw the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his career, including his bestselling “The Greatest Generation,” saluting World War II veterans. Behind the South Dakota native’s everyman appeal, Brokaw is an adroit internal politician with a keen understanding of power.Brokaw, who turned 75 last week, has the title of “special correspondent,” but wields internal and public power far beyond his on-air role, because of his celebrity and moral authority, and his relationships with top executives of NBC and its parent, Comcast.One NBC veteran said: “Tom is seen as the wise counsel, and what he says goes a long way. He’s not shy about making his opinion known about these things.”Brokaw, who has always had wary relations with Williams, issued a statement last week that many took as chilly, expressing no support for his successor, but simply saying that Williams’s future “is up to Brian and NBC News executives.”’Brokaw elaborated in an email to Playbook: “There is a process underway, and I didn't want to impose myself on to it. This is a very serious issue that must be resolved on the facts. All this endless speculation is unfair to all involved.”The NBC veteran said: “There is no love lost between those two. It’s always been a very awkward relationship. Brian has always felt very threatened by Tom, and acts very strangely around Tom. Brian wants to make sure he’s out front, and Tom is not in the way.”“Brian always feels the need to embellish,” the NBC veteran said. “He has always been known for telling stories dramatically, and he’s known for making any story about him.” But the bluster had always seemed more like a quirk than a time bomb. “It was more people eye-rolling: ‘That’s Brian,’” the NBC veteran said.Friends of Williams were initially mystified, and have become irritated, by the lack of support for the anchor by NBC News and Comcast. He is the face of the news division — a priceless asset — and these friends feel he has been hung out to dry, which has encouraged insiders to assume the worst and outsiders to pile on.But the lack of support is partly Brian’s fault, according to some colleagues. “A lot of people have been very loyal to Brian over the years, but he doesn’t jump in when other people need help,” said one person who has long known him. “He is not a stick-out-his-neck person.”Brokaw is said by friends to be very upset about the controversy. “It’s a horrible mark on NBC, and reflects badly on everyone,” said one friend. The network executive described Brokaw as “the moral center and conscience of NBC News – the glue, the ballast, the backbone, the GPS.”Brokaw helped lead NBC out of its darkest time – the scandal over a 1992 “Dateline NBC” report with a rigged truck explosion – and took over “Meet the Press” after Tim Russert’s death.Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/tom-brokaw-brian-williams-lies-115012.html#ixzz3RHOUM1bz lookin 1 Quote
Guest callipygian Posted February 10, 2015 Posted February 10, 2015 Peacock Panic: NBC in Disarray Over Brian Williams: UNDER FIRE - The Daily Beast02.10.15The embattled anchor goes into self-imposed exile and lawyers up. Meanwhile, NBC investigates, successors line up, and Tom Brokaw watches from above.It fell to substitute Nightly News anchor Lester Holt on Monday night to break the eerie corporate silence concerning the fate of Brian Williams.“We want to take just a moment to tell you where Brian is tonight,” Holt told viewers of the top-rated NBC News program over which Williams has presided since December 2004. “In a message to his colleagues over the weekend, Brian told us he’s taking several days off this broadcast amid questions over how he recalls certain stories he covered. In a career spent covering the news, Brian told us it’s clear he’s become too much a part of the news. He’ll be off while this issue is dealt with.”In interviews with The Daily Beast, NBC News insiders—who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and compensation—expressed shock, mixed with gallows humor, that Williams has fallen so far so fast—astonishingly enough, due to tall tales and shaggy dog stories that the anchor has told publicly, notably on his own newscast. Brian Williams is different—he’s a $50 million problem. If it was a lot less than that, you’d have to wonder whether they’d keep him.Only two months ago, he’d signed a five-year contract at a reported $10 million a year. But since last Wednesday, when the military-focused newspaper Stars and Stripes published a damning story that Williams has repeatedly embellished his 2003 war-reporting experiences in Iraq, his perch at the top of the network news ziggurat is suddenly at grave risk.“The Comcast people have a track record of marching out all these million-dollar figures to buy their way through their problems,” says an NBC News veteran, referring to the Philadelphia-headquartered cable television and broadcasting behemoth, the news division’s parent company. “[Fired Today cohost] Ann Curry cost them a bundle. [Fired Meet the Press moderator] David Gregory cost them a bundle. [Former news president] Steve Capus cost them a bundle. But Brian Williams is different—he’s a $50 million problem. If it was a lot less than that, you’d have to wonder whether they’d keep him.”Indeed, The New York Times reported that a damaging new survey conducted by an influential research firm, the Marketing Arm, showed Williams’ “trustworthiness” ranking plummeting from 23rd to 835th on its closely watched celebrity index.“My God, what’s happening to Brian is in the Zeitgeist,” marveled an NBC News wag on Monday. “He’s trumping Bruce Jenner on social media. I mean, cross-dressing Bruce Jenner killed somebody, but Brian Williams is still trending.”Holt’s 35-second on-air announcement was ominously at odds with Williams’ own Saturday press release that implied a brief hiatus and vowed: “Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.”Holt, however, made no mention of a “return.” Neither did NBC News President Deborah Turness, who on Friday launched an internal fact-checking probe to be led by NBC News’s chief investigative producer, Richard Esposito.“As you would expect, we have a team dedicated to gathering the facts to help us make sense of all that has transpired,” Turness wrote in a memo to staff. “We’re working on what the best next steps are—and when we have something to communicate we will of course share it with you.”Holt didn’t really inform Nightly News’s average 9.3 million viewers—600,000 more than ABC World News and two million more than the CBS Evening News—“where Brian is.”The anchor was said to be in a bad place, under self-imposed house arrest in the gilded suburb of New Canaan, Connecticut, conferring with his Washington-based agent/attorney, Williams & Connolly senior partner Robert Barnett, and taking phone calls from a few sympathetic colleagues offering advice as well as from the news division’s PR department. Besides negotiating on behalf of Williams, the ubiquitous Barnett also has represented Turness, possibly creating a thorny situation should talks about the anchor’s future become contentious. Barnett, who answered other questions from The Daily Beast off the record, didn’t respond to an email requesting comment on the potential conflict of interest.Should Williams somehow fail to pass muster in the probe and be judged damaged goods, Holt—who, like Williams, is 55—is in line to replace him, at least temporarily. Holt, who anchors the Nightly News and the Today show on weekends as well as the weekly magazine show Dateline NBC, has solid journalistic chops and—unlike Williams, who is seen internally at NBC as a remote, insular figure—is widely liked by colleagues. He is also African American. “He’d be a home run in terms of diversity,” says the NBC News veteran. “I think the senior executives have always underestimated him.”Another frequently mentioned possible successor for Williams, in the event of the worst outcome for the current anchor, is Matt Lauer, the top earner on NBC News’s payroll at a reported $25 million a year, who surely possesses star power and name recognition, but, say insiders, would be reluctant to leave Today. Turness, meanwhile, might be equally chary of risking the damage that Lauer’s absence might inflict on the morning-show franchise that she has been struggling to repair since she arrived from Britain’s ITV News and found the lingering turmoil and ratings decline prompted by Curry’s abrupt and painful departure.Another possibility, admittedly a dark horse, is NBC Sports anchor Josh Elliott, who was poached from ABC’s top-rated Good Morning America last March with the notion of someday slipping him onto Today’s roster.It’s a rich irony, of course, that the one person who likely could help Williams out of his predicament is someone widely believed to cordially dislike him. Namely Williams’ 74-year-old predecessor, Tom Brokaw, who gracefully stepped aside a decade ago so that Williams could take the anchor chair. Brokaw, who keeps an office at 30 Rock, remains a revered figure at NBC News; he is deeply loyal to the institution and is seen as an ombudsman who strives to uphold standards. An endorsement by Brokaw would measurably improve Williams’ chances of survival. But Brokaw, says a friend, was outraged by the lapse.“Tom still has power and influence inside of NBC,” says the NBC News veteran. “He will have great leverage if it comes down to Tom’s decision of whether he’s going to save NBC’s ass by saving Brian. But the problem in their relationship is personal; it’s fractured. It’s not unlike what’s happening in Washington between the president and the Republicans. There’s personal animus between Tom and Brian.”It dates back at least to Election Night 2012, says the NBC News veteran, when Williams made no secret of his wish to exclude Brokaw from the live coverage. “Brian did not want to be in the same studio as Tom. He thought Tom talked too much and was hard of hearing. He showed Tom tremendous disrespect and Tom knew this and knows this... When Tom wants to get something on Nightly, Brian fights that every step of the way.”Brokaw was characterized by the New York Post last week as “want[ing] Williams’s head on a platter” and “making a lot of noise that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report."Brokaw quickly denied the Post’s assertion, more or less, though he seems to regard his battered successor with a warmth approximating the temperature of liquid nitrogen. “I have neither suggested nor demanded Brian be fired,” Brokaw said in a statement. “His future is up to Brian and the executives of NBC News.”The embattled leaders of NBC News and its parent company, Comcast—Turness, her boss, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Patricia Fili-Krushel, and Fili-Krushel’s boss, NBC Universal CEO and Comcast Executive Vice President Stephen Burke—have offered anxious employees zero guidance, plunging anchors, producers, reporters, and desk assistants into panicky confusion. One, a friend of Williams, was said to be suffering from stress-induced insomnia and nausea since the controversy exploded last Wednesday evening.Williams’ troubles began with his false account of a March 2003 helicopter ride during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he told, with dramatic variations, on David Letterman’s late-night talk show and Alec Baldwin’s radio show in March 2013, and repeated on his own Jan. 30 newscast—only to recant it and apologize five days later after Stars and Stripes blew it out of the sky. Now he’s also facing scrutiny for stories of possibly untrue exploits during his 2005 coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and even whether, as a volunteer teenage firefighter in Middletown, New Jersey, he saved one (or maybe it was two) puppies from a burning house.On Monday night, however, Williams received some welcome if tempered support from an old friend, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart, with whom the NBC News anchor has frequently appeared. Stewart devoted the top of The Daily Show to gently mocking Williams for vanity and ego, but saved his sharpest barbs for hypocritical journalists who are trashing the anchor for trivial fibs—never mind that the some of the very same media heavyweights who are judging Williams uncritically spread major Bush administration falsehoods that ended up entangling the United States in a prolonged, costly, and unjustified war in Iraq.Meanwhile, on NBC News’s sister outlet, MSNBC, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough led a spirited defense of Brian Williams the man, in which Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist also participated. Scarborough quoted scripture: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Quote
AdamSmith Posted February 11, 2015 Posted February 11, 2015 Was just "suspended without pay for six months": http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/nbc-news-brian-williams-suspended-without-pay-202425.html?ml=tl_1_b Quote
