What do we care if Brian Williams, the anchor of the #1 mainstream media evening newscast, has turned out to be a compulsive liar? So he has a little personality quirk that causes him to embellish stories so as to make himself look more impressive. You don’t get to the top in a competitive business without a gift for self-promotion. It doesn’t mean the stories he reads off the teleprompter aren’t true, right? Wrong:
The New Yorker’s Gabriel Sherman took a deep-dive into the ongoing shipwreck that is NBC News. The most fascinating tidbit had nothing to do with the House of Cards-style machinations embroiling the Peacock Network. Buried under more than a dozen paragraphs is the bombshell that as anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams (who is currently serving a six-month suspension) refused to broadcast two big NBC News scoops damaging to President Obama.
According to Sherman’s sources, in 2013, Williams refused to broadcast the news about a Justice Department memo justifying drone strikes against American citizens. Later that same year, Williams wouldn’t air a report that said the Obama Administration had known since 2010 that ObamaCare would cost millions of Americans the very same insurance policies President Obama repeatedly promised they could keep. …
“He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told Sherman.
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ReplyDeleteHe was technically ahead of the curve.
Recall a story he did about a poor, elderly woman who didn't have the money to use free internet and thus decided to set up her own server system in a wealthy NYC suburb.
He helped to connect the cables and set up the router for her. She was planning to use her computer in arranging her daughter's wedding and her mom's funeral.
But he downplayed his efforts; just the kind of guy he was.
/sarc