When the whole Brian Williams thing happened in February 2015, we didn’t jump on the “Let’s get ’em” truck and burn rubber down that road like so many others. Obviously with all the negative attention he was getting at the time, adding our voice wasn’t going to contribute anything positive or negative. It was much more than normal media coverage reporting a story – it was the media itself emphasizing the story even more than they did for a variety of terrible atrocities around the world.
One of their own had gone too far. To let his words be minimized instead of scrutinized would surely cast a shadow over all of media and news as a profession. This one aspect of the situation might just be the single, most important reason why the reputation of Brian Williams might not recover.
We liken it to when Peter Rose placed bets on baseball while he was still playing the game professionally. The group that governed the sport is where most of his problems came from.
(And yes, we do know that our tiny little voice on the web isn’t likely going to be heard on topics like this over all the major news media outlets and others who did hang off that truck for a while.)
But the story rolls on. A few days ago Jack Shafer at Politico.com got a fresh dig in with his article, “Brian Williams Knows He’s Dead“. Regardless that it appears Jack was never really a fan of Brian’s to begin with, it seems NBC doesn’t want him on the air. And when you’re not wanted by your employer, you need to consider your alternatives.
We would be totally ok with Brian starting his own show and giving the hype jockeys like Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the like, a run for their money. It seems a less slanted and/or opinionated view might provide a breath of fresh air in that genre.
But the problem with that would likely be one where he isn’t controversial enough to alarm people – which is why he worked out so well on mainstream television news. The safe approach that is sometimes slightly rough around the edges is generally what seems to work well during prime family time.
Still, there might be a flicker of light left with a more humorous approach. He could maybe try to expand on his lesser-known talents like this montage of news clips where Brian Williams raps “Rapper’s Delight”, from the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon – although we don’t know how much of this had any input from Brian. Nevertheless, it’s an alternative angle for him consider pursuing with all the other choices he has.
Our take on all this is different than popular media’s view. Like many, we thought well of Brian before his ego got the best of him, but when a person reaches Brian’s statue in news reporting it’s often a case where you’ve got to be an incredibly nice and great person for others in your profession to not despise, resent and be jealous of you.
We imagine he started admiring himself too much. The first clues were when he came up with his own flavor of Kool-Aid and had it all delivered to himself.
Then he made the mistake of buying the wall mirror from Queen Ravenna. That probably pushed it to the breaking point.
That mirror was real by the way.
But his biggest mistake was just that – letting his ego run his mouth.
It seems like his head size grew out of control (at least his own control) which caused him to shoot his foot and then insert it into his mouth. He didn’t so much distort the facts of the story where it changed the story in how we cared about the information. He just inserted himself, inflated his involvement beyond reality, and didn’t blink.
As for how his reputation repair efforts go from here, under other circumstances this might be an easier situation to recover from. After all, some U.S. presidents have had to recover worldwide from saying wrong things having substantially deeper repercussions.
Brian’s peers can’t let it go as easily as maybe his normal, every-day fans might be able to. And since they are the media, they seem to be taking it as a slight against themselves – in many cases at an individual level.
Because we ave better things to do than follow this story closely. we can only assume that Brian has apologized profusely to his fellow professionals. Since they seem to be the most bitter, he might want to ponder what kind of statement he could make or something he could do that would appease them.
On the other hand, the opposite approach might be more effective. Swaying public opinion in his favor might allow him to reshuffle and deal a “shut up” card to his peer if he could get more of his fans to show NBC (or some other network?) his continued popularity.
The problem with that approach may just be that while people did like him, maybe they just didn’t like him enough to make that kind of effort on his behalf. The effort would need to be substantial since journalists have a louder voice than most average citizens.
Journalists are also supposed to have a code of ethics that prevents the mistakes Brian Williams made, but the code says nothing bad about eating your own. Is this the group camaraderie from which the term, “dog eat dog” was reversed from the original meaning?
Brian Williams with all his fame and respect and notoriety crossed the line. Apparently it’s one of those few lines that is only one-way.