Oh no, who will I trust now?
That’s a lament you’re hearing from people who are upset over the revelation that Brian Williams lied about coming under RPG (rocket-propelled
grenade) fire while riding in a U.S. military helicopter on a visit to Iraq in 2003. The whole thing flared up quickly and suddenly this week -- fueled in no small measure by the strategy Williams
adopted to deal with it.
It’s a common tactic taken up by many public figures in situations such as this one in which the allegations are apparently true: Address them head on and as
quickly as possible. If they’re true, own up to them and apologize with great humility.
The reasoning behind this strategy is this: By confronting the situation directly, you accept the
fact that you will come under withering fire in the court of public opinion -- i.e., the Internet -- for a short period of time, maybe a few days, until the world turns its short attention span to
something new and your wrongdoing fades into the mists of water-colored memory.
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Whether Brian Williams will be so lucky is not something I can judge. It is true that this is a Friday, and news
stories such as this one -- which seem so important to everyone at the moment -- have been known to weaken in importance over weekends.
So maybe he’ll weather it and maybe he
won’t. What I always question at these times is this trust so many people seem to have when it comes to their news media.
I realize that it’s not wrong to place one’s trust
in a TV news anchorman such as Brian Williams. Such people are positioned in such a way that they are cloaked in a presumption of trustworthiness.
It is “network” news, after all
-- an institution that for all intents and purposes hasn’t changed that much over the decades, at least in this sense: It’s still the one category of TV news that many people still
consider to be “august” and “authoritative,” “accurate” and “true.”
So when one of these “august” anchormen reveals himself to be
just another windbag in the tradition of Ted Baxter -- our best-known caricature of an anchorman (along with Ron Burgundy) -- who embellishes, or at worst, makes up stories to inflate his importance,
then it’s appropriate to feel like we’ve been had.
Maybe it’s because I have worked in the news business that I have a different take on this “trustworthy”
business. I don’t exactly advise trusting no one, but when it comes to news media of all sorts, it’s probably advisable to take some of what you’re seeing and hearing with a grain of
salt.
So many stories -- on TV and in newspapers -- contain inaccuracies and/or omit relevant facts that it’s rare to hear or read a “complete” story about just about
anything. (Those occasions when some newspapers -- such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal -- still do “in-depth” investigations are notable exceptions to
this “rule,” but not always.)
Moreover, most people don’t even get their news from TV or newspapers anymore (obviously). They get it from late-night monologues delivered by
comedians, or in 140-character form on Twitter. And those Tweets are often not news at all, but some person’s snarky opinion about the news.
The fact is, accuracy in reporting -- or more
specifically, in the way we receive news -- is scarcer and scarcer today. Maybe that’s why so many people are disappointed in Brian Williams because his newscast and the other ones on ABC and
CBS are supposed to be the last bastions of the kind of news that you are supposed to safely assume is accurate and true.
And I suspect that’s still true, despite Williams’
Ted Baxter-like boasting. Maybe the takeaway from this situation is this: It’s probably still okay to trust NBC News and even Williams when he reads the news and then throws it to a
correspondent in the field. But when Brian starts to talk about himself, which happens more off the news -- on other shows such as the “Letterman” show, for example -- then you have every
right to be wary.
Here’s the strategy I would advise for Brian Williams: Deliver the news, don’t talk about yourself, and cancel all plans to appear on anyone else’s
show.
And maybe by Monday we can all forget this ever happened.