Did you hear about former NBC nightly news host Brian Williams? Well, if you haven’t, he’s out, and all the complaints about an outrageous and hypocritical media firestorm can’t conceal the fact that the petard on which poor Brian self-hoisted and self-destructed was a cream-puff nightly news item about a non-event starring Brian himself! Did America need, or want, to know that at the half-time of a 2015 New York Ranger hockey game, the hapless fans were “treated” to a salute to brave Sergeant Major Tim Terpak, honored for having saved Brian Williams, which he did not do, the salute featuring NBC footage showing the hole in the Chinook helicopter in which Brian was not riding. So Brian, to puff himself, arranged to have the New York Rangers hype his non-escape from death in the guise of honoring one of America’s warriors, using NBC footage to “confirm” his deceit, and then broadcasting said hype and deceit on NBC in order to lie to America and thus advance his career.
It’s no secret that Brian saw the nightly news as the dead end it surely is and wanted out. Well, now he is. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
Afterwords
In the New York Times article I’ve linked to, the Times says that Williams’ “credibility plummeted after he acknowledged exaggerating his role in a helicopter episode in Iraq.” Does saying that you were in a helicopter that was hit by an RPG when you weren’t constitute “exaggerating your role”? It sounds more like “lying” to me.1
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Of course, the Times doesn’t say that Williams exaggerated his role. They say that he said he “acknowledged exaggerating his role.” We didn’t say it! He said it! The Times is nothing if not non-judgmental. ↩︎
