LESSONS UNLEARNED: NBC News being NBC News!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2015

Part 3—Embellishing with the stars: Did Brian Williams really go broke, at age 22, during his year in Kansas?

Everything’s possible, of course, even if Williams has said it. And sure enough! In Sunday’s Washington Post, the paper was sticking to that familiar old story, despite a shaky source.

Others have amped the story up more. Here’s how the Post chose to tell it:

ROIG-FRANZIA (2/15/15): In Washington, Williams interned in the Carter White House and clerked at the National Association of Broadcasters. He met the owners of a tiny television station in Pittsburg, Kan., population 18,770, and took a news reporter job there in 1981, making $168 a week. The idea was to move up to a bigger market, but his résumé tape was rejected by numerous medium-market stations, he later said. Williams has since said he was so financially strapped that he was “bankrupt.”

Williams returned to Washington and took a job at WTTG, then a struggling news organization, operating a Chyron machine, which displays the type seen on television screens.

Other reporters have added more bathos to this tale. In his 2007 book, Reality Show, Howard Kurtz even described the way Williams’ Dodge Dart “died one day in a cornfield.”

For the record, that Dodge Dart did, or perhaps did not, make the trip to Kansas. Williams has told the story both ways. That said, please take note:

Even in a lengthy report about Williams’ propensity to tell tall tales, the Post repeated his standard Dust Bowl ballad, citing no source other than Williams himself.

Right at the start of the Post’s report, the Post even vouched for this story as “real!” Meanwhile, the paper pimped the pathos a bit, omitting some parts of the story:

Williams’ apparent paying job at the White House was missing from this report. This White House job preceded his job at the NAB.

Also omitted: the fact that Williams returned to a job at the NAB after his year in Kansas.

Did Williams crash and burn in Kansas, returning to Washington beaten and “bankrupt,” feeling he had blown his chance for a broadcast career? Routinely, scribes have written the very sad story that way, taking dictation from Williams.

Could something different be true? Is it possible that Williams went to Kansas with a nest egg from his initial professional jobs at the White House and the NAB? That he planned to gain a year’s experience on the air, then return to the District?

We’d say that’s possible too! But as far as we know, no one has ever tried to fact-check Williams’ sad-sack story about his alleged failure in Kansas. And the Post kept telling this story on Sunday, even in a lengthy report about the way its single source seems to tell tall tales.

You can chalk that up to habit, and to lessons unlearned! At one point in Sunday’s profile, the Post provided an insight into the culture of the upper-end press corps.

How does the upper-end “press corps” do business? In Sunday’s front-page report, the Post became the latest source to report or suggest an intriguing fact—inside NBC News, people knew that Williams was telling tall tales all along.

At NBC, they knew all along! The Post explained it like this:

ROIG-FRANZIA: On camera, Williams was preternaturally gifted, cutting a handsome figure with a serious but easygoing manner. His prominent chin skewed slightly to his left, giving his face a kind of permanent complexity and expressiveness. He could play it straight delivering the news in a rich baritone. He could stick to the facts.

[...]

But when Williams was talking about himself outside the confines of his anchor’s desk, he seemed to want to make his experiences more dramatic, colleagues said. He was the biggest news anchor in the country, the undisputed ratings champ, but he often pushed stories to their limit—and sometimes beyond.

“That’s Brian being Brian” became the newsroom shorthand.

“Brian’s not a liar,” said an “NBC Nightly News” journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because network management has strongly discouraged staffers from speaking publicly about Williams. “He’s a guy who gets caught up in the story. He’s a great storyteller. But sometimes storytellers embellish...”

According to the Post report, people knew Williams was telling tall tales all along. “That’s Brian being Brian,” folk in the newsroom said.

Williams’ colleagues knew he was inclined to “embellish!” Later in Sunday’s report, the Post amplified this theme, discussing Williams’ publicity-building guest spots on late-night TV shows:

ROIG-FRANZIA: At 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, NBC executives cheered the appearances.

In the newsroom, reporters and producers grew increasingly concerned.

“Brian was a hell of a journalist,” said a longtime NBC producer, who no longer works for the network. “But Brian was always pressured by management to be more approachable, show that raconteur side of himself. And when you go on Letterman or Stewart, there are different rules.

“They are looking for good stories, and Brian knows how to tell good stories.”

According to Roig-Franiza, “reporters and producers grew increasingly concerned,” presumably because they knew those “good stories” weren’t necessarily true.

Did it matter if Williams told tall tales about his personal life? If, for example, he stretched the truth about his dark days in Kansas? (We don’t know if he did.)

Does it matter if he stretched the truth about the puppy, or possibly the puppies, he has said he once saved? About the time he says he was held up at gunpoint while selling Christmas trees?

About the dysentery he did or didn’t contract in New Orleans? About his college-age contact with the Pope? About the sausages he took in the NBC car in hopes of saving his own life?

It wouldn’t hugely matter if Williams told tall tales about such matters. It wouldn’t change the course of world affairs. That said, here’s the problem:

We can point you to tall tales Williams told on the air back in 1999—and these tall tales did matter. Was that just “Brian being Brian” too? Is that why no one complained?

What kind of tall tales are we talking about? We refer to the crazy account he gave of that New York Times op-ed page which he said had savaged Candidate Gore. We refer to the crazy way he described those Gore-Bradley polls.

(Click those links to review our reports from real time.)

In these tall tales, Brian Williams was misreporting a crucial White House campaign. He was also spending an inordinate amount of time complaining about one of the candidates’ deeply disturbing clothes.

Why was Williams doing those things? Why did no one speak up at the time? Those tall tales did matter, a lot. Why did no one complain?

Let us suggest the obvious answer to this question:

Forget about “Brian being Brian.” That was also “NBC News being NBC News” at that point in time. As of 1999, that was also “the mainstream press corps being the mainstream press corps.”

Alas! The mainstream press had adopted a set of narratives concerning Campaign 2000, narratives they very much loved. As of the fall of 1999, they were pushing those standard group narratives very hard. And when NBC News or the mainstream press corps does that, all career players inside the bubble know they mustn’t complain.

That’s what occurred in 1999. Let’s return to the string of tall tales the press corps is now discussing:

According to the Washington Post, people inside NBC News knew all along that Williams was telling tall tales about his career and his personal life. But Williams was a giant star, and everyone chose to defer.

Before the week is done, we’ll examine one particular type of tall tale, the type that brought Williams down. According to several journalists, this is the one type of tale you aren’t allowed to tell.

Within NBC News, you were allowed to tell tall tales about your own life and career. “That’s Brian being Brian,” his colleagues apparently said.

Also this: “Brian’s not a liar.”

After becoming the NBC anchor, Williams had become a giant star—and giant stars are given a great deal of rein within our “press corps.” Tomorrow, a bit of comic relief:

We’ll show you how far one scribe was willing to go to repeat those improbable tales.

Tomorrow: Your sausages or your life!

Supplemental: How Brian Williams got to the White House!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

The accidental man: On the surface of things, Brian Williams was a very strong early achiever.

After two years of community college, he came to Washington in September 1979 as a student at Catholic University.

Things took off from there—or at least, it seems they did. As of 1980, he had an internship at the White House. It became a paying job.

When Jimmy Carter left the White House, so did Williams. Still just 21, he moved to a job at the political action committee of the National Association of Broadcasters. His boss, Ken Schanzer, later described his role thusly:

“Although he was only an aide, he helped us raise money, organize nationally, and was a key member in all the discussions charting the direction in which we were going to go. I thought he was enormously mature and politically sophisticated for his years.”

Who knows? Maybe Schanzer was embellishing when he made those remarks. (Schanzer went on to be head of NBC Sports.) At any rate, one thing seemed to lead to another from there. By the time he was 34, NBC News was paying Williams $2 million per year.

Here’s our question: How did Williams get that first gig at the White House? In 2012, the anchor answered the question this way in a commencement address at George Washington University.

Warning! Self-deprecation alert!

WILLIAMS (2012): I come down [to Washington] and I tried to transfer my vast credits from Brookdale [Community College] to Catholic University. They have run out of dorm space because I am a little late in applying, so they find room for me in the administration building of Trinity College across the street. There are eight of us living on the top floor—eight men, 600 Catholic women. It was fantastic.

And things just start happening to me. One of the young men we lived with in the administration building named Rocco came home one day and said he had to vacate an internship at the White House, was anyone interested?

I owned one blue blazer, again not to brag, but I had worked at Sears, and I bought it with my employee discount.

And I said, “Why, Rocco, that sounds like a terrific opportunity for me. After all, there is nothing about my background that doesn't leave me perfectly equipped to go into the West Wing every day.”

And so I interviewed for the internship, and by some quirk I got it. And for the next year, every day I was going into the West Wing in the Old Executive Office Building, while trying to pursue my college studies at Catholic University.

“Things just started happening to me!” That should probably be the motto on Williams’ coat of arms.

Williams’ story may be perfectly accurate, of course. On the other hand, does that sound like the way people get internships at the White House? Rocco says he’s leaving his post, does anyone want to take it?

That story may be perfectly accurate. We know of no reason to think that Williams had any pull inside the Carter White House. On the other hand, has any journalist profiling Williams ever bothered to ask?

That said, it’s a perfect example of the humble, sad-sack way Williams has always tended to tell his life story. Except in the early days, when the early profiles began presenting his life in a dangerous way—in terms of wealth and connection.

As Williams continued that commencement address, he told a sad sack, woe-is-me tale about the reason why he dropped out of college in 1980. Earlier in his career, he had told the same story in an extremely upbeat way, as we noted in this morning's report.

Will the real Brian Williams please stand up? Do you believe the story he told about his route to the White House?

LESSONS UNLEARNED: Will the real early Brian Williams stand up?

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Part 2—Narrative shift: Why did Brian Williams drop out of college in 1980, in what may have been his senior year?

As with almost everything else, Williams has told the story in different ways down through the years. Below, you see the initial explanation, as reported by Barbara Matusow in 1994, in an early profile of Williams for The Washingtonian.

Williams was 35 at this time. He had started rising to national prominence as NBC’s congressional correspondent.

Why did Williams drop out of college? Matusow told the world this:

MATUSOW (12/94): [H]e wound up in Washington, enrolling first at Catholic University. then switching to George Washington University because it offered more night classes. By then he had caught the political bug. He got an internship at the Carter White House, which turned into a paying job.

That marked the end of his formal education. “I had this choice to make,” he says. “I called my parents and said, ‘I’m never going get this chance to work the White House again.’ I was having the time of my life, working with Harvard and Yale grads. Me, a mutt from the Jersey shore.”

After Jimmy Carter was defeated in 1980, Williams, just 22, was hired by the political-action committee of the National Association of Broadcasters...

That sounded like the story of a fast rise by a highly successful young person. But uh-oh! According to a timeline of Williams' life in Sunday’s Washington Post, here's how he was telling the story as of 2012:

WASHINGTON POST TIMELINE (2/15/15):
Fall 1980
Attends George Washington University's night school program for part of one semester before withdrawing. "It was during a particularly tough stretch and one night I was stressed out, I was running out of money, I was living in a basement apartment at 35th and O streets that flooded on occasion, and the meter was running, and I was running out of cash," Williams said in a 2012 commencement speech at GWU. "And I walked out. Walked out of college for the last time.”

For the full commencement address, click here. But as you can surely see, those are substantially different stories.

Will the real early Brian Williams please stand up? Over the years, Williams has told this story in two different ways. But that is true of many events in the ever-changing life story of Brian.

Here's why we mention this:

For years, we’ve discussed the role “narrative” plays within our nation’s upper-end pseudo-journalism. The story of Williams’ life and career provides a fascinating case study—a chance to see the way the “press corps” is willing to work from heavily scripted, heavily novelized Standard Group Tales.

They craft such tales about major pols—and about themselves and their colleagues. Routinely, accuracy gets thrown away. It’s narrative all the way down!

In Sunday’s Washington Post, ten reporters contributed to a lengthy profile of Williams’ life and career. At one point, lead reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia actually seemed to cite the way Williams has reinvented basic stories about his personal life.

“As the scandal enveloping Williams has swelled, even some of the basic architecture of the life story he tells has been swept into it,” Roig-Franzia wrote at one point. But he never unpacked that ornate statement, or cited any examples from Williams’ early life story.

Instead, Roig-Franzia started his lengthy report by citing one of Williams’ colorful tales about his early adulthood. Roig-Franzia then vouched for the story as “real” (see yesterday's report).

Right from its opening paragraphs, the Post was buying a suspect tale. Again and again with our mainstream “press,” it’s narrative all the way down!

Will the real early Brian Williams please stand up? Over the years, Williams has painted two vastly different portraits of his early adult years. It’s fascinating to see the way a later narrative supplanted the story Williams originally seemed to tell about those early years. The question of why he dropped out of school is only one part of this syndrome.

What follows is a tale of two narratives. It’s also a picture of the way our “press corps” works.

Uh-oh! An initial narrative seemed to paint Williams as a rather privileged, highly-connected fast riser. This picture emerged from the earliest profiles of Williams, written when he began to develop a national profile as NBC’s congressional correspondent.

In these initial profiles of Williams, a picture of remarkable early career success seemed to emerge. Williams left college at age 21 because he had a paying job at the White House. When Jimmy Carter left the White House, Williams moved to a job at the political action committee of the National Association of Broadcasters.

His boss at the NAB, Ken Schanzer, was quoted saying this: “Although he was only an aide, he helped us raise money, organize nationally, and was a key member in all the discussions charting the direction in which we were going to go. I thought he was enormously mature and politically sophisticated for his years.”

At this point, Williams was just 22.

Through Schanzer, Williams then landed a job at a small Kansas TV station, where he worked for a year as anchor and principal reporter. At age 23, he returned to Washington and to a job at the NAB.

Soon, he was on the air at Washington’s WTTG, a major station in one of the nation’s most important TV markets.

By any standard, that’s a story of rapid success. All those elements come from Matusow’s 1994 profile in The Washingtonian.

But uh-oh! In 1993, Ellen Edwards had profiled Williams for the Washington Post. Her profile added an element of family connection to this picture of rapid success.

In 1985, Williams had married into a highly-connected family. (They're still married today.) This type of information has almost completely disappeared from subsequent profiles of Williams:

EDWARDS (10/18/93): When Williams was at [WTTG], he was asked to substitute for Maury Povich, then host of "Panorama." At 11 a.m. that day, he says, he met a woman named Jane Stoddard; it was her first day producing the talk show. At 4, he swears, he told Smilovitz he was going to marry her, which he did a few months later. That was eight years ago.

She had grown up in New Canaan, Conn., where the two now live with their two children. And her family was friendly with the Salants, as in Richard Salant, former head of CBS News.

"He adopted me as a science project," says Williams. He grew close to Salant, having occasional talks at his house, and he credits him with building his journalistic foundation. At Salant's memorial service in February, among all the famous-name CBS eulogizers was Williams.

CBS anchor Connie Chung, an admirer and friend, says Williams developed a measured approach because of his exposure to Salant "by osmosis. ... I've always thought he would go right to the top," she says.

Williams’ father-in-law, Hudson Stoddard, had been a major figure at New York City PBS. Salant, the long-time head of CBS News, “adopted me as a science project,” Williams unwisely said.

Brian Williams was 34 when Edwards’ profile appeared in the Post. He was being paid $2 million per year, Edwards reported.

This Brian Williams was hugely successful; he also seemed to be highly connected. One year later, Matusow reported that Williams and his family were living in “a huge, Italianate stone structure that looks like an ambassador’s residence” while he worked in D.C.

A story of wealth, connection and early success was emerging from these initial profiles. This flew in the face of familiar efforts to brand our network news stars as regular, everyday people, just like you and your Uncle Al.

Perhaps for that reason, that initial narrative gave way to a completely different story—to a narrative in which Williams is routinely presented as a serial sad sack whose massive early success was almost wholly accidental.

The change in narrative can be seen in the two different stories concerning Williams’ exit from college. That said, will the real Brian Williams please stand up? And who is the actual Williams?

That question is hard to answer. But as the years moved along, Williams adopted a story of his life which heavily stressed his alleged everydayness and his accidental success.

Hudson Stoddard and Richard Salant were disappeared. Shopping trips to Target and Price Club took Salant’s honored place. Facile explanations were offered for his various early successes—for that internship at the White House, for that job at the NAB, even for the sad sack route by which he got on the air at WTTG.

“Italianate stone structures” were no longer mentioned. According to Howard Kurtz, the humble working-class fellow was living in the same Connecticut farmhouse where his wife grew up!

(Unmentioned: The farmhouse sits on several acres in the nation’s eighth-wealthiest town.)

On Sunday, the Washington Post almost seemed to warn its readers about this narrative shift. “As the scandal enveloping Williams has swelled, even some of the basic architecture of the life story he tells has been swept into it,” the paper opaquely said.

The Washington Post never quite explained what that warning meant. It gave no examples in which Williams has changed “the basic architecture of the life story he tells.”

Instead, it started with one of Williams’ sad tales about his early years, vouching for it as “real.”

This was a lesson unlearned. At this point, it’s quite unwise to believe any of the colorful tales Williams has told. It’s especially silly to source one of these tales to Williams himself, then vouch for it as “real.”

It’s very silly to function that way. But in our upper-end national “press corps,” it’s quite often narrative all the way down!

Williams has pimped this second narrative hard. His colleagues agreed to repeat it.

Later today: How Williams got to the White House

Supplemental: The Dodge Dart died in the Kansas cornfield!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2015

As told by Howard Kurtz: Did Brian Williams crash and burn, at age 23, in his first TV job?

It doesn’t actually matter. But on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post, a team of ten reporters repeated this familiar old tale, citing it to an unreliable source—Brian Williams himself.

The story is “almost impossible to believe,” the Post reporters excitedly said. But the story is “real,” they declared.

Aside from the basics, we have no idea how “real” that story is. Did Williams really crash and burn in his year in Kansas? Or had he always planned to return to D.C. after gaining a year of experience out in the Kansas cornfields?

We don’t have the slightest idea, nor have we ever seen any sign that anyone else really knows. Below, you see the way Howard Kurtz told the story in his ludicrous 2007 book, Reality Show.

Kurtz larded the story up, offering barrels of bathos:

KURTZ (page 31): In 1981 [at age 22] William got a job at a tiny station called KOAM in the Kansas town of Pittsburg, near the Missouri border, where he anchored the news and shot and edited his own stories. He worked seven days a week. The station’s general manager, Bill Bengston, found him eager to learn and desperate to get into the business. So desperate, in fact, that when Bengston told him that his name was “too East Coast Catholic” and he would have to change it, Williams, feeling crushed, prepared a speech for his parents. He was too anxious about succeeding to get the joke.

The unpaid bills and college loans piled up as Williams labored for meager wages, and when his Dodge Dart died one day in a cornfield, Bengston helped arrange a loan for a Ford Escort. But not even a new set of wheels could get Williams to a bigger market. He sent his audition tape to stations in Tulsa and other midsize cities without a nibble. He had no health insurance and was forced to skip meals. Clearly, he had failed.

Williams packed his dog, Charlie, into a Ryder truck, drove to Washington, moved into a basement apartment, and took a courier’s job at the National Association of Broadcasters, delivering documents in a red station wagon. It was a huge comedown.

Did Williams’ return to D.C. really involve “a huge comedown?” Had he really wanted to move on to Tulsa, a larger market?

We don’t know, and we see no sign that Howard Kurtz knew either. This is the way he told the rest of the tale:

KURTZ (continuing directly): But he kept trying to get his foot in the door, answering a want ad for a weekend job running the Chyron machine—which superimposed headlines and peoples’ names on the screen—at Washington’s WTTG. The pay was sixty bucks a weekend. But his smartass personality caught the eye of the news director, who gave him a tryout as a reporter and then assigned him to cover such issues as airport noise in northern Virginia.

Just like that, Williams was on the air in one of the nation's most important markets. He would have been 23 or 24.

Kurtz omitted the slightly peculiar story about the news director asking Williams to name the worst reporter on staff, then giving him that person’s job. Perhaps that story sounded too weird even for Kurtz, who filled his book with thoroughly implausible profiles of Williams.

Did Williams crash and burn in Kansas? Was his return to D. C. really “a huge comedown?” Had he even destroyed his audition reel, convinced that he had blown his one chance at a TV career?

That story seems a bit hard to believe. According to the standard stories, Williams got his job in Kansas through his initial job at the National Association of Broadcasters. He had gone to the NAB after a paying job at the White House.

According to Kurtz, Williams took a lowly job at the NAB upon his return to the District. That could always be true, of course. But below, you see the way these early years were described by Barbara Matusow of the Washingtonian, back before Williams seemingly decided to go with Horatio Alger tales.

Matusow profiled Williams all the way back in 1994. As she described his first few years in D.C., she seemed to be describing a high-achieving high-flier, not the basement-swelling sad sack of the later profiles:

MATUSOW (12/94): [H]e wound up in Washington, enrolling first at Catholic University. then switching to George Washington University because it offered more night classes. By then he had caught the political bug. He got an internship at the Carter White House, which turned into a paying job.

That marked the end of his formal education. “I had this choice to make,” he says. “I called my parents and said, ‘I’m never going get this chance to work the White House again.’ I was having the time of my life, working with Harvard and Yale grads. Me, a mutt from the Jersey shore.”

After Jimmy Carter was defeated in 1980, Williams, just 22, was hired by the political-action committee of the National Association of Broadcasters. He likes to downplay the experience, portraying himself as a messenger who delivered packages to congressional offices. But his boss at the NAB, Ken Schanzer, says, “Although he was only an aide, he helped us raise money, organize nationally, and was a key member in all the discussions charting the direction in which we were going to go. I thought he was enormously mature and politically sophisticated for his years.”

Maybe Schanzer was overstating. But according to the standard story, it was Schanzer who introduced Williams to Bengston for the job in Kansas. When his year in the cornfields was done, Williams returned to a job at the NAB, “portraying himself as a messenger who delivered packages to congressional offices.”

That’s the way the story was told before Williams went all Alger. Back in 1994, Matusow seemed to be portraying a rapidly ascending high-flier—a guy who went from the White House to a substantial job at the NAB and then on to Kansas for a year of on-air experience at age 22.

Did Williams return from Kansas at age 23, bankrupt, embarrassed and beaten? That’s the way Kurtz agreed to tell it in his book.

For unknown reasons, ten reporters in yesterday’s Washington Post declared, on faith, that this story is “real.” As we’ve long told you, our upper-end “journalism” is all too often narrative all the way down.

LESSONS UNLEARNED: Brought down by one of his many gifts!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Part 1—The Post limns Brian Williams: Many lessons could be learned from the mess which surrounds Brian Williams.

Needless to say, the mainstream press corps seems determined to avoid such lessons. Consider one part of the mammoth report in yesterday’s Washington Post.

The report appeared above the fold on the front page of the Sunday Post. Inside the paper, it consumed the entirety of pages A12 and A13.

The report included some spotty reporting about the various inaccurate tales Williams seems to have told down through the years. But right off the bat, we were struck by the Post’s explanation for these inaccurate tales—an explanation which appeared right in the Post’s front-page headlines:

WASHINGTON POST HEADLINES (2/15/15):
Williams undone by his gift for story-telling/
Anchor’s love of a good yarn played a role in his downfall

According to those hard-copy headlines, it was one of Williams’ many “gifts” which led to his recent downfall. It was “his gift for story-telling”—his “love of a good yarn!”

Many commenters mocked the Post for this upbeat explanation. Those commenters had a good point.

For ourselves, we were even more struck by the way the body of this mammoth report began.

The lengthy report carried three reporters' bylines. Seven more reporters were listed as having “contributed to the report.”

Manuel Roig-Franzia was the first reporter listed. This is the way he began:

ROIG-FRANZIA (2/15/15): The story of Brian Williams is almost impossible to believe.

And that’s just if you include the parts that are real.

It’s almost impossible to believe that a kid reporter who couldn’t find his way out of a small-market dead end would get his big-market break operating an off-camera graphics machine in a Washington newsroom.

But Williams did.

Was Brian Williams really unable to “find his way out of a small-market dead end” at the start of his career?

Did he proceed from there to “get his big-market break operating an off-camera graphics machine in a Washington newsroom?”

In Roig-Franzia's assessment, those store are “almost impossible to believe.” That said, are those stories “real?”

We aren't sure how to answer! That's the way Williams himself has always told those stories. But it’s never been clear to us that those familiar stories really happened in the patented “aw-shucks, woe-is-me” way that Williams has always told them.

Did Williams really wash out of that “dead end” job in the way he has always described? Later in his lengthy report, Roig-Franzia tells the familiar old story in more detail:

ROIG-FRANZIA: In Washington, Williams interned in the Carter White House and clerked at the National Association of Broadcasters. He met the owners of a tiny television station in Pittsburg, Kan., population 18,770, and took a news reporter job there in 1981, making $168 a week. The idea was to move up to a bigger market, but his résumé tape was rejected by numerous medium-market stations, he later said. Williams has since said he was so financially strapped that he was “bankrupt.”

Williams returned to Washington and took a job at WTTG, then a struggling news organization, operating a Chyron machine, which displays the type seen on television screens.

There he caught the attention of Betty Endicott, a pioneering journalist who had become the first female television news director in Washington. In Williams’s telling, which he recalled during a 2012 interview on the Mediabistro show “My First Big Break,” Endicott (who died in 2007) called him into her office and asked him who he thought was the worst reporter at the station. Endicott agreed with Williams’s assessment and gave him that reporter’s job, he said.

That first television job, at age 22, was at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas. Moving right along:

After one year at that tiny station, was Williams’ audition tape really “rejected by numerous medium-market stations,” as he has always said? Did he return to Washington defeated and even “bankrupt,” as he has always claimed?

We have no idea! You’ll note that Roig-Franzia’s source for these claims is Williams’ own past statements! The same is true of Roig-Franzia’s story about the way Williams got on the air at WTTG, in one of the nation’s most important TV markets.

Did Williams get on the air at WTTG in the colorful way Roig-Franzia describes? We have no idea! According to the hard-copy Post, Betty Endicott died in 2007, so Roig-Franzia had no way to check this colorful story with her as a principal source. And uh-oh:

On-line, the Post report has now been changed to say that Endicott died in 1989! We don’t know which date is correct, or why the date has been changed.

Can we talk? In profiles of Williams, reporters have repeated these stories for years. But the source of these colorful stories has typically been Williams himself. We’ve never seen any sign that anyone ever attempted to fact-check the colorful stories, in which Williams presents himself as an “accidental success” who stumbled unawares into his big break at WTTG.

In at least one of his dramatic tellings, Williams said he actually destroyed his audition tapes as he left Kansas, so sure was he that, after one year, he had failed in his pursuit of a broadcast career. We find that story quite hard to believe—but at one point, Williams told it.

How did Williams get on the air at WTTG? To state the obvious, it doesn’t actually matter. But we were struck by the way Roig-Franiza began yesterday’s front-page report—by taking one of Williams’s “almost impossible to believe” stories and vouching for it as “real.”

Are those colorful stories “real?” We have no idea; nor do we see any sign that Roig-Franiza knows. We hung our heads when the Post began its lengthy report in the way it did, with the latest recitation of one of these unconfirmed stories.

For whatever reason, Brian Williams seems to have told a lot of inaccurate tales through the years. But so what? When the Washington Post presented a ginormous front-page report on this matter, it started out by repeating, and vouching for, one of the tales, and by telling us, in its headline, that Williams was in his current fix because of “his gift for storytelling.”

Some commenters suggested a different headline, in which Williams’ downfall was attributed to “compulsive lying.” We wouldn’t run that headline either. But those headlines, and that opening anecdote, were examples of lessons unlearned.

On balance, that Post report was weak throughout, despite its massive length. But then, a great deal of the Williams coverage has showcased the broken state of our upper-end journalism.

Why has Williams told all these tales? Almost surely, we can give a partial answer:

Rather plainly, Williams has told a lot of tales because the upper-end press has allowed it. We could learn many lessons from this debacle—but, as Roig-Franzia’s report helps us see, we almost surely will not.

Did Brian Williams, at age 23, really fail to “find his way out of a small-market dead end?” Did Betty Endicott give him that quiz, then give him that job?

To all appearances, ten reporters at the Post don’t know the answers to those questions! But right there in those opening grafs, they vouched for those stories as “real.”

That’s one of the ways we got into this mess! Have any lessons been learned?

Tomorrow: Some kinds of misstatements are forbidden. Other misstatements are fine.

Later today: Howard Kurtz tells the KOAM/WTTG story

THE FOG OF BRIAN’S VARIOUS SONGS: Still crazy after all these years!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2015

Part 5—The songs of SEAL Team Six: The broken state of our public discourse has been our subject for seventeen pointless years.

A couple of quick examples:

In February 2000, that broken discourse was on display when Brian Williams and Bill Turque discussed the psychiatric problems suggested by Al Gore’s polo shirts and three-button suits—when they conducted that crackpot discussion and nobody thought it was nuts.

(Williams had obsessed about Gore’s polo shirts all through the fall of 1999, often with Howard Fineman cast in the role of sidekick. Within the pundit corps, everyone agreed to pretend that these crazy discussions made sense.)

In September 2000, that broken discourse was put on display when Fineman told that same Brian Williams why the press corps had just invented two new “lies” by Candidate Gore.

Gore had moved ahead of Bush by ten points in the national polls; inside Washington, it was widely believed that the White House campaign was over. At that point, the guild invented two new “lies.”

On September 21, 2000, Howard told Brian why:

“I don't think the media was going to allow, just by its nature, the next seven weeks and the last seven or eight weeks of the campaign to be all about Al Gore's relentless triumphant march to the presidency,” Fineman said, right there on TV.

Williams took this statement in stride, thereby displaying the broken nature of our American discourse. To Brian, that seemed to make sense.

Our archives are full of bullshit like this from the endlessly horrible Williams. Have you forgotten the Democratic debate he conducted with Tim Russert in October 2007?

Williams was always a mess. The craziness of our discourse lies in the way the liberal world agreed to ignore his lunatic conduct, and that of the others.

In the past few weeks, it has come to seem that Williams may have been crazy in a more fundamental way—in a way which moves beyond the boundaries of standard press corps nonsense.

Yesterday, more apparent bullshit surfaced. This time, the problem involves Williams’ claims about the gifts and gratitude he says he’s received from the men of SEAL Team Six.

As it turns out, Williams has made claims about SEAL Team Six in the past few years which look and sound a bit crazy. Last night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper program opened with a long segment about these claims, which were made on several Letterman programs. (John Berman served as guest host.)

To read the Cooper transcript, click here. For basic background info, click this. In fairness, you have to see Williams telling these stories to get the full taste of the possible craziness which may be lurking there.

It isn’t good when people are crazy. It’s better for the world if such people get some sort of help.

But our mainstream press corps runs on Crazy—and on the agreement by mainstream pundits not to notice this fact. Williams has been an apparent tool for a very long time. You really shouldn’t believe a word which falls from the handsome man’s lips.

That said, we’ve given up on the usefulness of trying to discuss this long-standing state of affairs. The Drums and Dionnes, the Alters and Ezras, were simply never going to tell you what Williams and his colleagues were doing. They are never going to tell you what he and his colleagues have done.

Our national discourse runs on Crazy. Judged by any normal standard, Williams has been crazy down through all these years.

He’s just crazy in a different way now. And crazy like this ain’t allowed!

Crazy right from the start: Back in 1999, we often discussed Williams' conduct, as you can see by clicking through our incomparable archives.

How crazy was Brian back in the day? In Chapter 5 of our companion site, we summarized his scripted obsession with Candidate Gore's polo shirts in this charitable way:

THE WAY HE GOT THERE: [T]he clothing campaign took on many forms as journalists pounded away at Gore’s character. Example: Even amid the bogus claims concerning the candidate’s boots and suits, Brian Williams was treating himself to a small nervous breakdown concerning Gore’s polo shirts.

Candidates had campaigned in casual clothing for years, but Williams was suddenly troubled. Gore was “wearing polo shirts twenty-four hours a day,” the anchor groused on October 6, on his nightly cable program. The polo shirts “don’t always look natural on him,” he weirdly complained two nights later. For whatever reason, Williams thought Gore was wearing the shirts in some sort of effort to woo female voters. The anchor repeatedly stated this theory, asking guests when Gore’s strategy would “all start becoming so transparent [that] no one is fooled” (October 6) or (October 8) whether the strategy was going to “become absolutely transparent when they go out into the hinterlands and try to sell it.” On and on the grumbling went. Incredibly, Williams raised the question of Gore’s polo shirts on five separate programs in one eight-day period, with two nights off for weekend rehab. In such ways, the corps obsessed on Gore’s clothing for a full month before they landed on [Naomi] Wolf.

This is the way Jack Welch's Lost Boys pounded at Candidate Gore for two years. In the end, their hard work paid off:

Williams gained great wealth and fame, even as Bush ended up in the White House. The Drums and Dionnes, the Alters and Ezras, will never discuss what occurred.

Supplemental: Back when Nicholas Kristof was different!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Sanctimonious blowhard, heal thyself: We’re so old that we can remember when Nicholas Kristof was different.

In today’s column, he’s at it again. He drops his first B-bomb on Alabama as early as paragraph 3!

At one time, he wasn’t like this. We’re so old that we can remember when Nicholas Kristof might start a column like this:

KRISTOF (4/24/04): I've argued often that gay marriage should be legal and that conservative Christians should show a tad more divine love for homosexuals.

But there's a corollary. If liberals demand that the Christian right show more tolerance for gays and lesbians, then liberals need to be more respectful of conservative Christians.

“Hug an Evangelical!” That’s what his headline said!

We don’t know how often Kristof had argued for same-sex marriage at that time. As of 2004, he hadn’t made the argument often in his New York Times column.

On the other hand:

Back in those days, Kristof was much more tolerant of beliefs which differed from his. This is the way he continued in that column:

KRISTOF (continuing directly): One of the most ferocious divides today is that between evangelical and secular America. Some conservative Christians are all too quick to sentence outsiders to hell. And liberals denounce stereotypes of Muslims but not of ''Christian nuts.''

It's encouraging that the right is less hostile to gays and lesbians than it used to be. President Bush argued in his 1994 run for governor that gay sex should be illegal, while now he feels comfortable hitting up gays for campaign contributions.

On the other hand, the left seems more contemptuous than ever of evangelicals.

On the whole, we tend to agree with what Kristof said that day! In our view, it was encouraging that the right was less hostile to gays and lesbians than it had been in the past.

But how odd! As of today, it’s Kristof himself who is openly “contemptuous of evangelicals,” as you can see by reading his new column.

He drops his first bomb right in paragraph 3. When our Dimmesdale thunders today, this is the way he begins:

KRISTOF (2/12/15): In North Carolina, three young Muslims who were active in charity work were murdered, allegedly by a man who identified as atheist and expressed hostility to Islam and other faiths. Police are exploring whether it was a hate crime, and it spurred a #MuslimLivesMatter campaign on Twitter.

And, in Alabama, we see judges refusing to approve marriages of any kind because then they would also have to approve same-sex marriages. In one poll conducted last year, some 59 percent of people in Alabama opposed gay marriage. Somehow a loving God is cited to bar loving couples from committing to each other.

These are very different news stories. But I wonder if a common lesson from both may be the importance of resisting bigotry, of combating the intolerance that can infect people of any faith—or of no faith.

Was that a hate crime in North Carolina, or was it a terrible crazy crime? If it was a hate crime, was it a hate crime “from the right” (hatred of Islam) or a hate crime “from the left” (hatred of religion)?

So far, nobody knows. But as of this morning, Kristof was already tilting a bit toward hate-crime-from-the-right. People like this have always loved to encourage a good cleansing war.

More strikingly, Kristof moves quickly to same-sex marriage, and to sunny Alabam'. Fifty-nine percent of the state is opposed to same-sex marriage, so Kristof drops his bomb.

Back then, Kristof preached patience and respect. Today, those people are bigots.

You may prefer the newer version of Kristof. We’d be inclined to disagree, for political and moral reasons. (There is no law which says that everyone has to agree with Kristof's views, or with our own, on a timetable he has set.)

For today, we simply thought it was worth noting the change in Kristof. At one time, he was quick to preach understanding. Now he tends to “otherize,” a fact which is a bit ironic given the larger theme of his column today.

Kristof’s opposed to “otherizing”—except when he’s the one doing it! We think he was wiser in 2004, when he drew hope from the progress he saw among people who hadn’t reached the exact same conclusion he had at the exact same time.

Is Nicholas Kristof losing his soul? We wouldn’t rush to deny it! But in our view, he’s been doing some very strange journalism, a point we’ll explore again tomorrow.

His trip to Haiti struck us as quite strange. This may be what happens when a big journo gets over-extended, overloaded with stars, becomes a big Hollywood “brand.”

The shape of the tribal mind: At one point, Kristof says this today:

“It seems odd to me that so many conservative Christians are obsessed with homosexuality, which Jesus never mentions.”

Really? Kristof finds that odd? We can't imagine why!

To us, it seems unfortunate when people are obsessed that way. But it doesn't exactly seem odd. Not long ago, people were much less agreeable in this area than they are today.

Fifty-nine percent are opposed to same-sex marriage in Alabama? That strikes us as a very low number, given the culture of the state.

In 2004, Kristof thought things were getting better. We still think things are getting better, though we doubt that those B-bombs will help.

THE FOG OF BRIAN’S VARIOUS SONGS: The possible source of a widespread disease!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Part 4—Following the money: We’re willing to give the press corps credit. They’ve finally found the miscreant they misidentified, long ago, as Candidate Gore.

Just as they always suspected, a persistent, rather strange dissembler was right there in their midst! But it wasn’t Candidate Gore, whose “lies” they had to invent.

It seems that the persistent dissembler may have been NBC’s Brian Williams! Williams seems to have told a long succession of whoppers down through the years, in the psychologically puzzling way he and his colleagues spent two years attributing to Gore.

What will turn out to be true about Williams’ various claims about Hurricane Katrina? We’ll wait to see what NBC or other journalists learn and report.

That said, a bit of interest creeps into the stew thanks to Douglas Brinkley’s 2006 book, The Great Deluge. In the best-selling book, Brinkley seems to take many of Williams’ somewhat jumbled recitations and claims at face value.

Was Williams really consumed by “dysentery” and “delirium” for several days and nights during Katrina, as “armed gangs” were “brandishing guns and terrorizing guests” inside his hotel? That’s what it says in Brinkley’s book, whose index offers no other citation for “dysentery” in its full 768 pages.

It will be interesting to see how well Brinkley’s book holds up. Brinkley at least sidestepped the implausible story in which Williams seemed to say that he miraculously discovered the hole in the Superdome’s roof—though needless to say, only after taking a terrible fall.

Here's how Williams told that story in his October 2005 Katrina documentary.For transcript and tape, click here:

WILLIAMS (10/27/05): The storm winds started in the morning [of August 29, 2005].

When they lowered the huge corrugated steel doors at the back of the Superdome, we were inside with everybody else, locked inside for the duration of the storm. It was dark. The power was out early. There was no circulating air. There was only the food we brought.

I slipped on an awful combination of detergent, motor oil, and water on the slick cement ramps going down to the actual field, the turf.

I went down hard. And I was lying on the Astroturf on my back. Just gonna take a breather for a second. And I looked up. I saw a pinhole in the roof of the Superdome.

And that pinhole, lo and behold, grew larger and larger.

Al Gore said he discovered the hole in the Superdome roof!

Sorry, crackers! Despite all the stories you heard in the past, it was really a major journalist who told that rather implausible tale about the semi-miraculous way he managed to make an important discovery while flat on his back on that ramp!

Even flat on his back, while just taking a breather, Williams kept breaking the news! At least, that’s the way he told the story in his documentary. The film aired first on the Sundance Channel, then later on NBC.

Whatever! Williams’ many stories do tend to seem rather strange. They suggest that something may be slightly amiss inside the rich newsman’s head.

If that’s the case, we hope six months will help Williams get himself back under command. Meanwhile, we'll suggest you might draw a conclusion from this stew of apparent tales:

Follow the money! More precisely, citizens should be very concerned when “journalists” get paid millions of dollars per year by big corporate “news organizations.”

When journalists—or popular historians like Brinkley—get turned into their own “brands.”

People, follow the money! It attracts the wrong people into news. And it may tend to corrupt such people once they land their big jobs.

People will do a lot of things to score more than $10 million per year—or to score the $7 million Rachel Maddow is said to be paid. Meanwhile, along with all that cash, you're gifted with all that fame!

How might these “brand names” be affected? At The New Yorker, Ken Auletta offered these thoughts in a recent post, Brian Williams and the God Complex:

AULETTA (2/8/15): [W]hile the spotlight is on Williams’s transgressions, a word about the complicity of NBC and the other networks’ marketing machines: The networks have a stake in promoting their anchors as God-like figures. By showing them in war zones, with Obama or Putin, buffeted by hurricanes, and comforting victims, they are telling viewers that their anchors are truth-tellers who have been everywhere and seen everything and have experience you can trust...NBC had a stake in promoting Brian Williams as all-knowing, just as a promo ad for the ABC anchor David Muir that I saw today portrayed the lightly experienced forty-year-old as worldly...

In addition to the marketing campaigns, something else happens that often induces anchors to think of themselves as God. Each of them is seen in roughly eight to ten million homes nightly. They are seen by many more people, and more frequently, than any movie star. To walk down a street with an anchor is to be stunned both by how many people recognize him and how many viewers call out to him about specific stories. There’s a respectful familiarity that is different from the awe surrounding Hollywood celebrities. The anchor is treated as the citizen’s trusted guide to the news. As a result, he can feel expected to dominate discussions, to tell war stories, to play God. It’s a short distance from there to telling fantastic stories—and maybe actually believing them.

Did Williams believe his “fantastic stories?” Before we try to answer that question, we’ll wait to learn which stories may have been true.

But wealth and fame—and fawning profiles by lesser scribes—can easily lead to that God complex. And this syndrome can grip “liberal” journalists too, even if we think we share their wondrous political values.

We’ve thought about Nicholas Kristof this week as we’ve watched the storms around Williams. We’ve also thought about Rachel Maddow.

We’ve remembered the story she always told about the way she could never own a TV set because, if she owned a TV set, she’d never do anything else.

That story, a bit of a humblebrag, helped create a fey brand. Today, a giant flat-screen TV hangs in front of Maddow’s large hot tub, as you can see in this swish photo spread from New York magazine.

There’s nothing “wrong” with owning a TV—but wealth and fame can be corrupting. We suspect they affect our “liberal” stars too.

If that’s true, would such a thing be good for progressive interests?

Tomorrow: Breaking! Kristof in Haiti

Supplemental: The fuller extent of what Rand Paul said!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015

Should this have been reported: Here at THE HOWLER, we won’t be voting for Rand Paul.

That said, we also wouldn’t vote for some of the recent journalism concerning Senator Paul. With that in mind, we’ll show you some of the things he recently said about vaccines.

First, let’s look at what Nicholas Kristof wrote at the start of Sunday’s column. He gave a rather standard account of what Paul had said.

Headline included:

KRISTOF (2/8/15): The Dangers of Vaccine Denial

In a few backward parts of the world, extremists resist universal childhood vaccinations. The Taliban in tribal areas of Pakistan. Boko Haram militants in Northern Nigeria.

Oh, yes, one more: Some politicians in the United States.

Senator Rand Paul—a doctor!—told CNBC that he had delayed his own children’s immunizations and cited “many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”

After an uproar, Paul walked back his remarks and tweeted a photo of himself getting a Hepatitis A vaccination. After that irresponsible scaremongering, I’d say he deserves to get shots daily for a decade. With really long needles.

Nicholas Kristof—a journalist!—gave a fairly standard account of what Paul had said on CNBC. Beyond that, his quotation of Paul was technically accurate. Many other journalists had quoted that same remark.

By the time Kristof’s column appeared, Paul had explained what he meant by those quoted words. His explanation didn’t seem to make much sense to us. But just for the record, he also said everything which follows before he made that one quoted remark.

He spoke with CNBC’s Kelly Evans. This is a fuller record of the things he said:

EVANS (2/2/15): Senator, thank you so much for being here on the program. It is good to see you. And listen, we have a lot to get to here that is important for our investors. But I just have to begin by asking: Did you really just say to Laura Ingraham that you think most vaccines in this country should be, quote, “voluntary?”

PAUL: Well, I guess being for freedom would be really unusual. I guess I don’t understand the point of why that would be controversial.

EVANS: Senator, maybe you are not aware, but there is a huge problem right now with Disney theme parks having to close down because of mumps. Not enough children being vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella because their parents, for whatever reason, have decided that it is voluntary. And I can tell you, plenty of people I work with are really concerned about their kids getting sick at school.

PAUL: Here’s the thing is, I think vaccines are one of the greatest medical breakthroughs that we have. I’m a big fan and a great fan of the history of the development of the smallpox vaccine, for example. But you know, for most of our history, they have been voluntary. So I don’t think I’m arguing for anything out of the ordinary. We are arguing for what most of our history has had.

EVANS: I understand that you are all for the choice. But again, if we are left in a situation where diseases that were once almost wiped out are now coming back because people are deciding not to vaccinate their kids, isn’t that a problem?

PAUL: I think public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids, and how they are good for public health, is a great idea. You know, we have just appointed a surgeon general. These are some of the things that are things that we should promote as good for our health. But I don’t think there is anything extraordinary about resorting to freedom.

I’ll give you a good example. You know, the Hepatitis B vaccine is now given to newborns. We sometimes give five and six vaccines all at one time. I chose to have mine delayed. I don’t want the government telling me that I have to give my newborn Hepatitis B vaccine, which is transmitted—

EVANS: Understood.

PAUL: —which is transmitted by sexually transmitted disease and/or blood transfusions.

Do I think it’s ultimately a good idea? Yeah, and so I had mine staggered over several months...

Personally, we wouldn’t vote for Paul. That said, Paul made all those statements about vaccines before he said the one thing Kristof quoted.

He said vaccines are one of our greatest medical breakthroughs. He said he’s “a big fan,” apparently of vaccines in general. He said he’s a great fan of the history of the development of the smallpox vaccine.

He said public awareness of how good vaccines are for kids and for public health is a great idea. He said the new surgeon general should promote that public awareness.

He said he had delayed his newborn’s Hepatitis B vaccine. But he seemed to say that he had only had the child’s vaccines staggered over several months.

“I’m not arguing vaccines are a bad idea,” Paul soon said. “I think they are a good thing, but I think the parent should have some input.”

How much input should parents have? Evans never asked. We’re omitting the one statement Kristof quoted.

We don’t mean to single out Kristof. By the time his column appeared, a wide array of journalists had quoted Paul in the same way he did. Kristof only stood out from the crowd in the way he now routinely does—by imagining a painful punishment for Paul, AKA The Other.

This brings us to our basic question: Do you think Kristof’s readers got a full sense of what Paul actually said?

More specifically, do you think Paul really “walked back his remarks” when he got that Hepatitis A booster the next day? When Kristof wrote that Paul “delayed his own children’s immunizations,” do you think his readers understood that Paul had only staggered the shots over several months?

Final questions: Do you think that Paul is involved in something that can be called “vaccine denial?” Do you think he's “resisting universal childhood vaccinations” in the manner of Boko Haram?

We wouldn’t make those statements. How do they grab you and yours?

Personally, we wouldn’t vote for Paul. We also wouldn’t report his remarks in the way Kristof and others did.

That said, this is the highly tribal way our reporting often works at this point. This approach will often make one of our various tribes feel good. But we don’t think this practice is good for the nation, or for progressive interests.

Did Kristof’s readers get a full sense of what Paul actually said? On balance, we don’t think so. Beyond that, we think this way of quoting politicians stands in the way of fuller, smarter discussions.

We wouldn’t vote for Senator Paul. Did you understand the full range of what he actually said?

For the full transcript and tape: For a full transcript of this exchange, you can just click here.

To watch videotape of the interview, just click this.

Instant pop quiz on today’s remarks: Our quiz today includes only one question. Based on your reading, do you think that we at THE HOWLER would vote for Senator Paul?

THE FOG OF BRIAN’S VARIOUS SONGS: Why was he in Iraq at all?

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015

Part 3—Brian’s ugliest song: Early this morning, we were struck by a comment to a piece at Salon.

Brian Williams had been suspended—without pay!—by NBC News. A commenter offered these thoughts:

COMMENTER AT SALON (2/11/15): I consider myself to be a reasonably well-informed, news-knowledgeable person, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have watched even part of an evening network news broadcast this century. And I am squarely in the middle of their 55+ target audience demographic. I don't know of anyone else who watches these news programs either. They might as well be 3 AM infomercials. Brian Williams seems like a decent guy, and I've enjoyed watching him in other venues. But Edward R. Murrow or I.F. Stone he ain't. Still, getting paid $10 million a year to look good in a suit and read the news should also buy at least a respectable level of trustworthiness.

Is Brian Williams “a decent guy?” We have no idea.

To us, Williams seems somewhat weirdly inclined to make up extremely strange stories. These stories aren’t simply inaccurate, embellished or self-promoting. His various tales of danger and suffering seem a bit strange to us.

To us, Williams also seems like a highly ambitious person, perhaps a bit self-absorbed. Along those lines, we were struck by one part of a front-page report in today’s New York Times.

This passage comes from our hard-copy Times, Emily Steel reporting:

STEEL (2/11/15): [Williams’] affinity for entertainment may have played a part in his current troubles. About five years ago, as NBC was contemplating who would eventually replace Jay Leno as host of “The Tonight Show,” a surprise candidate raised his hand: Brian Williams.

Mr. Williams told top NBC executives that he was keen to pursue his ambitions in entertainment and comedy. They called the idea ridiculous, telling him that he was a journalist, not a comedian, and to stick to the news department, according to two industry executives with knowledge of the discussions.

Did Williams actually want to replace Jay Leno? The claim is now being widely reported. We don’t know if it’s accurate.

That said, the humor in the Steel report comes in the highlighted passage. Top execs were forced to tell Williams that he is a journalist!

Is Brian Williams a decent guy? And has he really been a journalist? The answer to that second question isn’t entirely clear.

It’s rather clear from Williams’ history that he always sought the golden ring—the vast fame and enormous wealth that come to those who reach the very top of TV’s corporate pig-pile.

He did become enormously wealthy, despite his carefully-crafted attempts to make consumers think of him as a Nascar-loving former fireman who does his shopping at Target.

(For links to past work on these story-lines, see below.)

These endless stories have sometimes seemed to take Williams to the edge. His tales about his humble ways have sometimes seemed to involve the kinds of dissembling found in his tales about Iraq and Katrina.

Williams has always told us tales about his vast everydayness. In the process, he got enormously wealthy. This aspect of his career will go almost wholly undiscussed as other vastly overpaid pundits pretend to discuss what's occurred.

Is Brian Williams “a decent guy?” In his various tales about shopping at Costco, Williams has worked hard, for many years, to give us rubes that impression.

At Salon, one commenter has bought this impression, even though he doesn’t think much of Williams’ journalism. We’d advise him to be more careful when he makes such judgments.

We don’t really believe in “bad people” around here. But if we did, we’d be very angry with the big handsome multimillionaire who went on the air, back in the day, and helped us end up in Iraq.

Let’s be clear! In 1999 and 2000, Williams didn’t play a leading role in sending George Bush to the White House. From 2001 through 2003, he didn’t play a leading role in getting us into Iraq.

During those years, Williams wasn’t especially influential. Tom Brokaw still sat in NBC’s anchor chair. Williams, the anchor-in-waiting, was forced to bide his time on a little-watched nightly cable show, The News with Brian Williams.

People didn’t watch that show much. The program wasn’t influential. (By way of contrast, the Hardball of that era was.)

That said, Williams was on the air each night, awaiting that last big score. To the commenter at Salon who sees him as “a decent guy,” we want to recall what that other commenter said, the one who responded to Maureen Dowd’s Sunday column.

This is what that reader said as she recalled Williams’ work from that era. In 2002, she reached a very negative judgment about this decent guy:

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK (2/8/15): I used to watch The News with Brian Williams which was broadcast on MSNBC and CNBC at 9 PM Monday-Friday before he got his Nightly News gig. I was a working parent and that was the only time I could catch up on the news.

I stopped watching during the run up to the war in Iraq. Al Gore had given a speech that day against a US invasion in Iraq. In his run up to his lede on the speech, Williams acted like Gore was an insignificant politician who had the gall to disagree with the Bush/Cheney propaganda machine's meme that the US needed to rush to war with Iraq. He wondered aloud what Rush Limbaugh would think of Gore's overreach. As far as Williams was concerned, Limbaugh was the statesman and Gore was the nut job. It was instantly clear to me Williams was the worst kind of journalist, one who embraced popular opinion, not a search for the truth.

I never watched that show again. I've never watched NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, either. I would be happy to see him go.

In yesterday's report, we showed you what Williams actually said on that memorable night. Early and often, he asked if Gore’s speech the previous day had been “un-American.”

He fawned all over “our friend, Rush Limbaugh,” much as that commenter said. But then, if memory serves, this decent guy was fawning to Limbaugh quite a bit during that era.

We don’t believe in bad people here. But we wouldn’t stampede off to call Williams a decent guy.

Why do we say that? Let us challenge Dowd’s commenter on one important point.

Dowd’s commenter saw Williams fawning to Rush that night. She saw him dropping his “un-American” bomb, although she may not recall that.

She drew a conclusion about Williams’ motive. We’ll guess that she might have been wrong.

As Dowd’s commenter watched Williams that night, she thought she was watching “the worst kind of journalist, one who embraced popular opinion, not a search for the truth.”

She thought that explained why Brian was fawning to Rush. Let us suggest the possibility that this assumption was wrong.

If Williams had a motive that night—if he wasn’t simply doing his best—we’ll suggest that he may not have been chasing “public opinion.” We’ll suggest he was pushing the company line, a line that had clearly come into existence at NBC News and its cable arms during the Jack Welch years.

By 2002, Welch was no longer the corporate owner of NBC News. But Williams was still pushing that same old line.

Some part of this corporate line may have come from marketing concerns—from NBC's desire to attract conservative viewers. This corporate line may also have stemmed from Welch’s conservative politics.

But whatever the source of the corporate line, the line was quite clear at NBC News during the twenty months of Campaign 2000, when Welch’s Lost Boys worked very hard to send George Bush to the White House.

Williams played those games during Campaign 2000, when few people were watching his program. To appearances, he continued to push the company line this night in 2002 as he dropped his “un-American” bombs on Gore and pandered hard to “our friend, Rush Limbaugh.”

Is Brian Williams “a decent guy?” It’s easy to get that impression, in part because he has worked very hard to spread that impression around.

He may well be a decent guy in his personal dealings. We have no way to judge.

But Williams got in trouble last week because of self-glorying claims about an experience in Iraq. But how did we get to Iraq in the first place? Why was he even there?

In part, Brian Williams was in Iraq because chasers of Mammon had pimped the corporate line, exactly at this “decent guy” did on the night in question. Exactly as he and his NBC colleagues had done during the twenty-month War Against Gore.

What are Williams’ personal politics? We have no idea.

Who did he vote for in recent elections? Forced to guess, we’d guess he voted for Bush in 2000, for Obama in 2008.

We doubt that Williams is a consistent “conservative.” But he played one on TV in the Welch years, then in the run to Iraq.

After Iraq became a debacle, upper-end press corps politics began switching back on the war. Before that, Williams made the only smart play for a man who was still seeking those multimillions.

In the end, Brian got those multimillions. He never bought a home on Nantucket, the better to commune with Welch from. But in 2005, this report about Manhattan cribbage appeared at Forbes.com.

Brian’s new boss had bought a fine crib. Williams himself was already present, along with—who else?—Jack Welch!

FORBES (9/9/05): The CEO of General Electric has purchased a luxurious new condo in midtown Manhattan, Forbes.com has learned.

According to public records, Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive and chairman of the company, and his wife, Andrea, this summer bought an apartment in the newly constructed One Beacon Court. The final price? Just over $4 million.

The glass-and-steel high-rise is situated on East 58th St., between Lexington and Third avenues, above the Bloomberg Tower. For the high price, Immelt has bought some high-profile neighbors–including some he might know from the office. Jack Welch, former chief executive of GE, paid about $6.4 million for his Beacon Court spread, just a few floors above Immelt’s. Brian Williams, news anchor at General Electric-owned NBC, also lives in the building.

[...]

Immelt, 49, does have a house in wealthy New Canaan, Conn., not too far from GE headquarters in Fairfield. And he can certainly afford both–in 2004 his bonus came to $5.3 million, on top of his $3 million salary.

Immelt could afford both cribs? Having fawned to his friend Rush Limbaugh, Williams was now bringing in two times Immelt’s haul!

He owned a house in wealthy New Canaan too, handed down from the influential in-laws which must never be discussed in profiles of Williams. Now, he also shared a Manhattan address with Immelt and with Welch.

These are the sorts of facts people like Williams work quite hard to suppress. Obedient members of the guild will generally keep such facts undiscussed. This leads us rubes to believe the relentless cons about Brian’s vast everydayness.

Can we talk? Brian Williams was in Iraq because his employers worked quite hard to get us there. That’s how we found our way into Iraq—with people like Williams and Matthews pimping the glories of Candidate Bush, then calling Gore “un-American.”

We’ve warned you and warned you and warned you again—disaster lurks when “journalists” are handed multimillions by corporate owners like Welch. This syndrome affects our “liberal” journalists too, including those we may be most inclined to love, respect and trust.

We’ll discuss that problem before the week’s end; your lizard brain will insist that we’re wrong. But we don’t think that Williams is an obvious “decent guy” in the way he approaches the world.

We think he scratched his way to the top. Along the way, we’ll guess that he was often less than obsessively honest, and not just about those RPGs in Iraq.

People are dead all over the world because so many chasers of “press corps” Mammon sang these particular songs. On the brighter side, Williams is very wealthy today. People say he’s a decent guy.

Brian is very wealthy today. People are dead all over the world, but it all turned out well in the end!

Tomorrow: Ongoing points of concern

When Howard Kurtz sang Brian’s songs: Back in 2007, Howard Kurtz sang Brian’s various songs in his book, Reality Show.

By then, Williams was very important. Perhaps for that reason, Kurtz broke his back to tell Brian’s story in the way Brian likes it told.

In December 2007, we did a three-part Special Report about Kurtz’s ridiculous fluffing of Williams. For links to all three parts, click here.

For something resembling a fourth part to the series, you can just click this. Regarding that final report:

Brian Williams unveiled some “Gallatin chic” that day. For once in their lives, Tim and Chris had found their own alleged everydayness topped!

THE FOG OF BRIAN’S VARIOUS SONGS: Deferring to a wonderful friend!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2015

Part 2—All for the love of Rush Limbaugh: On balance, the New York Times is doing a lousy job discussing Williams-gate.

In this morning’s Science Times section, Tara Parker-Pope seems to advance the assumption that we are dealing with issues of memory in the Brian-gate matter. The possibility that we’re dealing with issues of dissembling is barely voiced once Parker-Pope starts chatting with the nation's “memory experts.”

Has Brian Williams been dissembling—perhaps even lying—over these many years? We can’t exactly tell you! In this morning’s op-ed column, David Brooks seems to suggest that Williams has been “puffing up his Iraq adventures” in a way which carries a moral dimension.

That said, Brooks suggests that we need to show compassion about these “transgressions,” that we need to look for ways to build “community solidarity.”

For ourselves, we don’t favor moral stampedes concerning matters like this. But what kind of “community” really exists between people like Williams, who may perhaps be telling his tales in pursuit of fame and massive wealth, and the millions of regular people who may get conned in the process?

Brooks never asks that question. Neither did David Carr in yesterday’s mealy-mouthed column, in which he performed his standard function at the Times—giving readers the (false) impression that the New York Times plays a watchdog role with respect to the press as a whole.

In fairness, Carr’s assessment of RPG-gate was perhaps a bit revealing. Consider this peculiar passage:

CARR (2/9/15): Those of us who worked the Hurricane Katrina coverage rolled our eyes at some of the stories Mr. Williams told of the mayhem there, but it was a dark, confusing place and a lot of bad stuff happened, so who were we to judge? But armed service and its perils are seen as sacred and must not be trifled with. The soldiers who ended up in harm’s way and survived that day are calling him out because their moral code requires it.

Say what? According to Carr, journalists had been “rolling their eyes” for some time at Williams’ kooky Katrina stories. But who were they to judge?

In our view, it isn’t their primary role “to judge”—but these journalists might have thought that it was their role to challenge or question inaccurate statements.

Not to Carr! In the world of Carr, American soldiers have a stronger “moral code” than American journalists do when it comes to matters like this! That strikes us as a wonderfully accurate non-admission admission.

Should people be piling on Williams for the many ridiculous statements he seems to have made through the years? Brooks approvingly cites a point made by Carr. “Williams’s transgressions were not part of his primary job responsibilities,” he says, largely correctly.

As we noted yesterday, Williams’ many peculiar statements were mostly rendered in interviews or speeches—not on NBC Nightly News. That said, we thought we’d cite something he said long ago, right there in his anchor chair.

Have Williams’ “transgressions” mainly involved ancillary topics? Have they mainly been offered in secondary venues?

Maybe yes, maybe no—we’ll return to that question later in the week. But on Sunday, a commenter to Maureen Dowd’s column recalled some statements from Williams’ anchor chair, statements the handsome anchor made when it really mattered.

These statements were made in September 2002. Brian was still on the way up, chasing the truly gigantic millions that would come his way when he took over Tom Brokaw’s chair.

Brian was still one step from the top. This is what this New York Times reader said she recalled him saying and doing as the war with Iraq drew near:

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK (2/8/15): I used to watch The News with Brian Williams which was broadcast on MSNBC and CNBC at 9 PM Monday-Friday before he got his Nightly News gig. I was a working parent and that was the only time I could catch up on the news.

I stopped watching during the run up to the war in Iraq. Al Gore had given a speech that day against a US invasion in Iraq. In his run up to his lede on the speech, Williams acted like Gore was an insignificant politician who had the gall to disagree with the Bush/Cheney propaganda machine's meme that the US needed to rush to war with Iraq. He wondered aloud what Rush Limbaugh would think of Gore's overreach. As far as Williams was concerned, Limbaugh was the statesman and Gore was the nut job. It was instantly clear to me Williams was the worst kind of journalist, one who embraced popular opinion, not a search for the truth.

I never watched that show again. I've never watched NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, either. I would be happy to see him go.

We fired up the Nexis machine. We were eager to see what Williams had actually said as the country he ostentatiously loves moved toward a disastrous war.

This reader’s recollection wasn’t completely perfect. But in some ways, Williams’ behavior was even worse than she recalled.

The reader was recalling Williams’ program from September 24, 2002. The day before, Gore had given a speech in San Francisco warning against the wisdom of waging a war with Iraq.

Much of what Gore said in that speech turned out to be prescient. But within the corporate elite where Williams was hoping to make the great score, the rush to war was underway—and this is the remarkable way he framed his lengthy discussion of Gore's remarks:

WILLIAMS (9/24/02): Is it un-American to speak out against the Bush plan to take on Iraq? Is it democratic to ridicule and threaten those who do?

Call it the loyal opposition, caught in the crossfire tonight as the nation prepares to go to war, perhaps, and a former vice president ignites a firestorm.

ANNOUNCER: The News on CNBC continues. Here again is Brian Williams.

WILLIAMS: Good evening once again, and welcome back.

It was odd to start the discussion by asking if Gore’s speech had been “un-American.” It was odd, but not plainly “wrong.” It would all depend on where Williams took things from there.

Uh-oh! As Williams continued, he immediately cited a friend. The commenter’s memory was correct on this score. The friend Williams cited was Limbaugh:

WILLIAMS (continuing directly): Today our friend, Rush Limbaugh, told his radio listeners he almost stayed home from work, not due to any health reasons but because he was so livid at the speech given yesterday by former Vice President Al Gore criticizing the Bush administration's apparent march to war in Iraq.

The anger that physically hobbled Mr. Limbaugh positively ignited his callers today, at least one of whom called Mr. Gore “un-American” for what he said yesterday.

Williams’ friend was so upset that he almost stayed home from work! And not only that! At least one of his callers that day had called Gore “un-American!”

This was a very strange way to frame a news discussion. But earlier that afternoon, Williams has done the same darn thing! Appearing on Ron Insana’s 5 PM CNBC program, he had teased his own upcoming show:

INSANA (9/24/02): Now, Brian, what about Al Gore's remarks? He's been talking about this potential war on Iraq of late and that the war on terror might, in fact, be injured by going after Saddam Hussein. What's the reception to that?

WILLIAMS: Well, for a lot of Democratic liberals, a lot of people in what passes for an anti-war movement, Al Gore broke the silence yesterday in his speech and he has absolutely ignited conservatives across the country. Rush Limbaugh said today he almost couldn't go on the air he was so angry at this speech yesterday. He did, nonetheless, and took non-stop calls of the like-minded for several hours.

Because of the content, we're going to talk about it on our broadcast tonight. Exactly who was willing to speak up against the notion of the US going to war? And as Gore was labeled today, is it anti-American to do so?

INSANA: All right. Brian, we'll see you in a little while.

WILLIAMS: All right, Ron. Thank you.

One caller to Limbaugh’s show had called Gore “anti- or un-American!” For whatever reason, Williams chose to use that hoary old claim as the framework for that evening’s discussion.

Judged most charitably, this represented terrible news judgment. That said, did Williams possibly have a motive for building his discussion around the fact that his friend, Rush Limbaugh, was hugely upset with Gore?

We can’t answer that question. We can tell you this—at this time, NBC News was working hard to make itself red state- and conservative-friendly.

The fawning to Limbaugh and Limbaugh’s perspective was hardly unknown to the network at this time. Jack Welch was no longer in charge at GE, NBC’s corporate owner. But conservative power was still on the ascent in Washington, and NBC had worked for years to dispel the thought that its regular guy, blue-collar anchors were part of the “liberal media.”

Long before Williams told silly stories about his heroism, he spent years telling silly, hazy stories about his alleged blue-collar roots as his role as a man of the people. His deference to his friend, Rush Limbaugh, fit nicely into NBC’s branding during this era, as well as to the branding of Williams himself.

Perhaps for these reasons—or possibly not!—Williams built his discussion this night around the horror felt by his friend, one of whose callers had called Gore “un-American.” One year before, Chris Matthews had played the same card with respect to Gore, telling Don Imus that Gore “doesn’t look American,” even.”

NBC News played these cards for some time as the network chased the Clintons and then Candidate Gore all over the land. For years, we liberals dumbly sat on our hands and allowed these attacks to persist.

(No one is dumber than we are! Try to keep this fact in mind as the same people who tolerated all these attacks try to sell you a new improved “liberal” approach.)

What kind of community can we built with hustlers who play the game this way? We aren’t sure, but that commenter to Dowd’s column recalled a memorable performance by Williams—and it was hardly the first time he had behaved in peculiar, even ridiculous, ways in the pursuit of Vile Gore.

(At this site, we began citing Williams’ peculiar work back in July 1999. Needless to say, the liberal world was asleep in the words at the time. We were sucking our thumbs and stroking our privates and displaying the world-class Dumb in which we persist to this day.)

That commenter said she never watched Brian Williams again. In closing, we want to show you what she missed if she turned off her set a little bit early that night.

She may have missed Bernie Sanders challenging Brian’s song! Late in the show, Sanders challenged the handsome anchor’s extremely hoary old framework.

Sanders was just a congressman then, but he knew how to push back. Meanwhile, give Brian credit! He fought back hard in defense of his wonderful friend:

SANDERS: I really am concerned about some of the language you used leading up to this discussion, the suggestion that it is un-American to criticize the president and we're supposed to be fighting for freedom.

This is not Iraq. It's not China, and I think the American people want a serious debate on this issue.

[...]

I think the position that Jim [McDermott] and I are advocating is what the vast majority of the people want. They want us to work with the United Nations. They are concerned about the impact of a unilateral effort on the war on terrorism, as Al Gore just said...

WILLIAMS: Congressman, Congressman Sanders, just to be fair, I was quoting, when I used the term “un-American,” a caller to Mr. Limbaugh's radio show accusing—

SANDERS: But who cares what—but who cares what Rush Limbaugh says?

WILLIAMS: Well, let's not attribute it to the broadcast. Let's attribute correctly.

Let's attribute correctly! Suddenly, Brian was very concerned about fundamental fairness! He was willing to float “un-American” rather widely with respect to Gore. But he sought fairness for Rush!

Later, the handsome chaser of multiple millions thoughtfully told viewers this:

WILLIAMS: For the record, we tried to get Rush Limbaugh on tonight. He had another engagement, sent his regrets. But I confirm that was the sound of a trash can hitting the wall during his broadcast today, a rough day for Rush.

Poor Rush! He had really had “a rough day,” all thanks to that speech by Vile Gore!

Brian has sung a lot of songs in his relentless climb to the top. Tomorrow, we’ll look at some of the ways he built his personal brand from (almost) the first days forward.

His misstatements concerning Ritz-Carlton-gate and Chinook-gate may not be that big a deal. But Brian has sung a lot of songs, as have some major TV stars who make their millions today as jumbled “liberal” journalists.

What kinds of “community” can we build with people who play it this way? Wealth and fame can attract the wrong crowd. We warned you about Williams long ago, much as we might warn you today about the branding of stars like Kristof.

Tomorrow: Just an unassuming blue-collar shlub who does his shopping at Target!

Supplemental: What actually happened in Haiti?

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Taking the PBS Challenge: Many PBS stations are currently airing a three-part series, A Path Appears, which features Nicholas Kristof.

This is the official synopsis of the PBS series:

A Path Appears, from the creative team behind the series Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, follows Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and a group of dedicated actor/advocates to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States. They uncover the harshest forms of gender inequality, the devastating impact of poverty and the ripple effects that follow: including sex trafficking, teen-pregnancy, gender-based violence, child slavery and the effective solutions being forged to combat them.

Parts 1 and 2 of the series have already aired. Part 3 airs this week on most participating stations.

We were puzzled by one segment from Part 2 of the series. It concerned the experiences of a 13-year-old Haitian girl.

You can watch Part 2 of the series on-line, but only through February 14. For that reason, we're posting the links today.

This is our reason for calling your attention to this fascinating segment from Haiti:

We were puzzled, and nonplussed, by certain aspects of this segment from the PBS show. We didn’t understand why the girl in question was treated the way she was—why she was treated the way she was by Kristof and the team with which he was involved.

Let’s be frank. In some ways, it seemed to us that this girl had been treated very badly. That segment from Haiti is very much worth watching. But watching the segment left a bad taste in our mouths, a bad feeling in our stomachs.

We became more puzzled over the weekend when we saw that Kristof had written a column about these same events back on January 1. The column appeared in the hard-copy New York Times, but only in the paper’s New York editions.

To read the column, click here.

Why were we puzzled by the column? It told the story of this same girl. But the basic chronology was quite different from the chronology shown on PBS.

In Kristof’s column, he explains why the girl was weeping profusely at one part of the story. But his explanation is quite different from the story we seemed to see take place on PBS.

We expect to return to this matter on Friday. We wanted to alert you to it today, since the PBS show will only be available for on-line viewing through the end of the week.

To watch the PBS segment on-line, you can just click here. The fascinating segment in Haiti starts around the 31-minute mark.

The segment runs about one half hour. Because of the beautiful Haitian kids it involves, the segment is very much worth watching.

That said, we’ll suggest that you Take the Haiti Challenge! Watch the show, then read Kristof’s earlier column. If we might borrow from the ancient Dylan lyric:

“But oh, what kind of journalism is this, which goes from bad to worse?”

Kristof tells the story one way in his New York Times column. His PBS program tells the story quite differently, with a substantially different chronology being shown.

In each instance, a child is subjected to some very rough treatment, which leaves her weeping profusely, with no one bothering to explain why this had to occur.

The otherwise useless female movie star is in the PBS program, of course. In this way, we PBS viewers get ourselves pleasured with major celebrity fun.

As we've thought about the career-building affected by Brian Williams, we wondered more and more each day: What’s going on with Nicholas Kristof? Is Nicholas Kristof just a different version of Williams?

Perhaps he’s grossly overextended. That said, does he really care about Kevin Green’s kids? About that Haitian girl?

Go ahead—Take the Haiti Challenge! Read the original column, then watch the subsequent PBS show.

You'll see the story told two different ways. Which story do you prefer? And why was that lovely child forced to cry so hard?