“Broadcast News” and the demise of Brian Williams

Last week, as so many commentators have noted, was a big one in media. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was suspended. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart announced his departure after 16 years. Acclaimed foreign correspondent and 60 Minutes star Bob Simon and New York Times media critic David Carr (late of Washington City Paper) both died suddenly.

From a CNN Money column: “So much about journalism can be learned from this week: hubris from Williams, wit from Stewart, consistency from Simon, and ferocious eloquence from Carr.”

By coincidence, this weekend a local station was showing Broadcast News, a film I hadn’t seen since its debut. Billed in part as a romantic comedy, it’s also about the rise of blow-dried TV anchors who are all style, no substance, over less-glamorous reporters steeped in knowledge that informs their work. The film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Actor for all three leads.

NBC Nightly News was my newscast of choice—less for its anchor than, I admit, for its lead-in, the voice that said, “This is the NBC Nightly Nooz With Brian Williams.” The voice said “nooz” twice, which reminded me of where I came from, which was worth a smile every night. So I saw the January 30 broadcast where Williams thanked the embarrassed Army veteran whose platoon protected him in Iraq, after Williams’ helicopter supposedly was hit.

What had been whispered about for years suddenly came to the fore, assisted by Facebook, a service member who wrote there, “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft…,” and a Stars and Stripes reporter who saw this and followed up with a story. Quite a few times, Williams had either lied about or “conflated” the facts about his helo ride—plus the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and maybe even a puppy rescue in New Jersey.

Was it “conflation,” which is real and understandable in regular humans? But Williams knew better; his own blogs and past recordings held differing versions of the same stories, versions that were later used to cut his career short. Why didn’t he fact-check himself? Was he such a big shot that no one would call him on his many retellings as they grew?

“LYIN’ BRIAN” was the harsh assessment of the New York Post’s front page, showing Williams on air with a Pinocchio-like extended nose.

Which brings me to the climax of Broadcast News. Holly Hunter’s producer character is drawn to and repelled by William Hurt’s empty, pretty-boy newsreader character, who confesses that he’s not smart, can’t write, doesn’t know current events, but interacts perfectly with a camera. He’s everything Hunter can’t stand about where the news business is headed.

Director James L. Brooks sums up Hunter’s dilemma by having her confront Hurt about a (cursory and shallow) segment he reported on date rape. A real Hunter would have caught the problem with the segment right away, but in the movie, not until the end does she point out that he faked a tear for the camera. It’s a firing offense, she says. He either doesn’t care or doesn’t see her point. So she dumps him.

Brian Williams has never, to my knowledge, been accused of faking a news segment—only of exaggerating several events outside of his anchor chair. But it’s a matter of credibility, and that’s what he’s “selling” when in that chair. As Hurt’s character puts it, “Just remember that you’re not just reading the news, you’re narrating it. Everybody has to sell a little. You’re selling them this idea of you, you know; you’re sort of saying, ‘Trust me, I’m, um, credible.’ ”

Just like that, Williams wasn’t credible anymore. This new thing called social media inflated his conflation to the point where NBC couldn’t ignore the outcry and suspended him for six months. “You can’t have an anchor on the air while his judgment and credibility are being questioned on every front page in America,” said an NBC insider. Rumor has it the brass wanted to fire him outright, but as the highest-rated news anchor, he was too valuable a commodity.

My guess is that like Stewart, Simon, and Carr, Williams will not return to his post. At 55, his career may not exactly be over, but anchoring the evening news was probably its apex. It’s fun to imagine, as some wags have suggested, him and Stewart switching jobs. In the end, though, there’s nothing funny about the end of last week and the end of a career for a man the Washington Post calls “an anchor with a relatively thin reporting resume who was eager to cement his journalistic bona fides.”

Copyright 2015 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.

Where there’s smoke, there’s ire

The Post’s real-estate editor surprised me by putting my condos/smoking article online late Tuesday afternoon, ahead of Saturday’s print publication date. (See mini-rant three posts ago about this self-destructive practice.) The next day, other editors surprised me more. Just after lunch, I wrote a friend, “My next story (in print Saturday) was buried deep on the real-estate page … suddenly it’s on the front page online, with my name! Being of a private inclination, I’m not sure this is necessarily good, but it’s getting a lot of comments ….”

A lot of comments indeed. Within hours, the number had climbed to more than 200. Then it was 340. Then it plummeted to 280 or 290. Comments police at the Post removed some, and all of the many by one person have disappeared. In any case, by late Wednesday, the story (and my name) were off the front page, and the pace slowed to nearly nothing until the story appeared in print yesterday. Right now there are 365.

Thursday night I mentioned all this to another friend, who said something about the attention. “They’re not talking about the story,” I said with a wry smile. “They’re bashing each other.”

Commenters at the Washington Post are a bit more civilized than at the New York Post, but these are too often ad hominem attacks. One commenter on my story wrote of another, “You are stupid.” Another put up a tirade against every major racial and ethnic group. (Eventually that one got removed. “Gotta love the diversity in that post,” someone wrote, which made me snort.) A few dozen comments attacked “libs” or Obama even though the article has nothing to do with politics. People on one side called people on the other side “whiny,” “selfish,” “idiotic,” “crazy,” “disgusting,” “neurotic,” “brainless,” and “bigots,” among other things, and one wrote, ” … if you did die, I am sure the rest of us would appreciate the peace and quiet.” Whew!

Should newspapers and other media police their comments sections? It’s an ongoing debate in newsrooms. The Washington Post’s ombudsman has weighed in, and I think there was an online chat about the issue. The New York Post seems to be a free-for-all. The New York Times is either well regulated or has more thoughtful and polite readers – probably both. Our Post surely feels like it’s dealing with a moving target.

Consider, for example, not this story, which quoted several people but focused on an issue, but the one two weeks ago in the Post Magazine about Page Melton Ivie – a story that focused on a person and secondarily on other people and issues. Big issues: After a notable reporting career, Page’s first husband is permanently in a childlike state due to medical calamity, and Page was resigned to caring for their children at home and him at an assisted-living facility. Years later she reconnected with an old friend, and they eventually married, which necessitated divorcing Robert, though he now lives close to the new family in the Midwest, where all of them visit frequently, and Allan has his own real friendship with his new wife’s first husband. (I was stunned to realize, when the article mentioned Page’s birth name, that I’d known her, and even Allan slightly, in college, though we were a few years apart.) A lot of readers, including me, found the article moving, a testament to open hearts and open minds and the tremendous power of love.

It was disheartening to learn that other readers – many – were horrified. They called Page terrible names, accusing her of not taking her wedding vows seriously and tearing apart her family for selfish, carnal whims. They said she was an example of a throw-away society and deserved to go to hell for bailing on Robert when the going got tough. Never mind that she didn’t do anything of the sort and in fact spent years finding ways to keep her family together and even expand it through a painful and draining ordeal.

Poor Page – or anyone – to be on the receiving end of so many hateful, ad feminam comments. A column a week later blasted those commenters, noting how easy it is to lob firebombs from behind the shield of anonymity and wondering how many people would say the same things if they had to attach their real names. Those of us who naturally shy away from public fora (a sexist old saying was that a woman’s name should appear in print only upon birth, marriage, and death; I amended that for myself to add three-point bylines) will hesitate even more to toss a personal opinion into the lions’ den, leaving it inevitably to the lions and the blowhards. Or, wait … is that too insulting? Leave a comment. Good thing this blog is purely an academic exercise for which no one has the address.

Copyright 2012 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.