NBC Gives Their Star Propagandist Brian Williams the Heave-Ho (For Now)

When, after a week, the “controversy” over the NBC “news” anchor’s pathetic and juvenile false story about being in combat in Iraq in 2003 didn’t die down (he claimed to have flown in a helicopter hit by an insurgent rocket-propelled grenade), the NBC bosses decided to cut their losses and try and erect a moat around the damaged “credibility” of their propaganda operation. NBC has announced a six-month “suspension” of Williams, without pay.  This leaves Williams’ dangling in the wind for now. NBC wanted to separate itself from Williams’ in the public mind. [1]

 

After a week of public opprobrium heaped on Williams’ head by citizens, not by the commentariat, [2] which mainly concerned itself with the careerist insider-gossip question of whether Williams would “survive” (as if losing a plum job and key position in the establishment firmament is death), NBC’s poohbahs ultimately opted not to stand with Williams’ implausible excuse that he merely was confused by some oddly-recurring memory malfunction.  Deborah Turness, president of NBC News, intoned, “This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position … As managing editor and anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards [sic] of the news division at all times.” The Big Boss at NBC Universal, Steve Burke, unburdened himself of a tongue-lashing directed at Williams; “By his actions Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate.” [3]

Hell hath no fury like a boss who perceives his property is damaged by an employee.

You see, “credibility” is a very valuable “asset” of “news” operations, really the key asset on which their power to manipulate the masses rests- and in turn their commercial viability too.

In the week since Williams’ belated outing as a liar, he fell from 23rd to 835th on a list of the most “trusted” people in the country maintained by Celebrity DBI. Oh yeah, and the ratings of NBC’s Nightly News fell 27% in less than a week. I think that’s all the explanation one needs for NBC’s decision, and its timing. Pay a guy $10 million a year whose public image is plummeting straight down to the core of the earth? Not good business.

But if one wants to explain away Williams’ narcissistic and self-aggrandizing lying as the product of a temporary brain glitch, one has plenty more to excuse. Not just the fact that Williams told the Iraq War (fish) story repeatedly, in public, most recently on his “news”cast January 30, but his history of lying and self-promoting exaggerations and tall tales. Williams lied from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He had another close call in his own mind in 2007, when he claimed that while cheerleading for the 2006 Israeli ravaging of Lebanon he was in a helicopter when Hezbollah rockets flew underneath. [4] Williams even claimed he once “looked down the barrel of a .38” handgun as a teenager, when he says he was robbed in Red Hook, NJ. Conveniently he didn’t report the “robbery” to the police. Residents of the area in question don’t believe Williams story, saying the neighborhood is very safe.

Mark my words: the next act for Williams will be a show of “self-reflection” and “learning from this experience” and how “it’s up to me to regain people’s trust” and how awful he feels that he “let people down,” all in an attempt to claw his way back up to his privileged perch. It probably won’t work, but he’ll land in another cushy, if less exalted, position somewhere in the power structure. The Establishment looks after its own. [5]

An unethical society like America is prone to having con men, fabricators, fabulists, and sociopaths rise to prominence, wealth, and power. Williams is an insignificant example, and only became widely iced because things finally, after years, went awry for the hustler.

“Poor Widdle ME! It’s so unFAIR!” Brian Williams now gets to wallow in self-pity, the usual reaction of the narcissist when bad luck strikes. (Don’t be fooled by the play-acted public “apology” that contained more lies, about faulty memories and confusion. That was nothing but a desperate ploy to hang onto his TV anchor chair.)

1] Undoubtedly various clauses in Williams’ contract with NBC were invoked to suspend Williams AND suspend his salary. Notice the difference from when murderous cops are suspended due to public outrage- they’re invariably suspended with pay. U.S. police departments virtually always stand in iron solidarity with the sadists and killers in their ranks. Suspensions with pay is a tactic to wait for things to blow over.

2] Williams’ chronic self-puffing lies only caught up with him only after years of egotistical prevaricating, when the newspaper Stars and Stripes, a publication aimed at military personnel, interviewed eyewitness soldiers who had been griping on Facebook about Williams’ bullshit and ran a story, which spread knowledge of Williams’ sleaziness among the armed forces generally and from there to the larger public. For more details on Williams’ deception and the larger context of this scandale du jour, see “Why 50 MillionDollar NBC Liar Brian Williams Thought He Could Get Away With aSelf-Aggrandizing Bald-Faced Lie,” posted below.

Ironically, Williams is an assiduous promoter of U.S. militarism, which is camouflaged in U.S. propaganda as “supporting the troops.” What’s actually being supported, indeed powerfully promoted, is U.S. aggression and imperialist domination. In this, Williams was just doing his job. (Unlike Phil Donahue, who had the top-rated show on MSNBC, yet another arm of the NBC octopus, back in 2003 when his show was canceled because he refused to drink the Bush regime’s Kool-Aid and pound the war drum like everyone else in the establishment media. There’s your “free press” and “freedom of speech” and “diversity of viewpoints.” Now we’re seeing the same thing over Ukraine. But I digress.)

3] Steve Burke summoned Williams to Burke’s palatial Manhattan aerie (one of his homes) to inform him of his being cut from the propaganda roster. Burke is chief executive of NBC Universal, a giant media combine that owns many subsidiary corporations in the U.S. propaganda system in both the “news” and “entertainment” arms of that system, including NBC, in which is nestled another corporation, NBC News. NBC Universal itself is owned by yet another corporation, the giant and widely hated cable company Comcast. These corporations are like a series of Russian dolls nestled inside one another.

As for the “high standards” of NBC’s “news” division that its boss Turness indignantly huffed Williams had besmirched, like all U.S. TV operations, NBC has a history of participating in CIA disinformation campaigns quite willingly, as well as spreading FBI propaganda and various lies of “officials.” It also is dedicated to presenting a false picture of reality generally in order to indoctrinate and manipulate the American population. One could catalog thousands of obvious falsehoods purveyed by NBC (and the rest of U.S. corporate media) which conclusively prove the cynicism of Turness’ self-righteousness.

4] He fed this fantasy to a student interviewer at a Connecticut college in 2007. Was she a pretty coed he wanted to bed? There’s a question for investigating. Oddly, during 2006, when he described his Lebanese exploits on war the NBC News blog, he never mentioned this hair-raising close call. Hey, maybe the guy’s problem is he’s too MODEST! Do you suppose? [“NBC’s Brian Williams told varying versions of rocket fire in Israel-Hezbollah war,” Washington Post Style section, February 8th, 2015.

Williams’ stories get better with each retelling by him. The real tragedy in all this is now we’ll never get to hear the version of the Iraq helicopter war story where the pilot is wounded and unconscious and Brian seizes the controls, attacks and destroys the “terrorists” on the ground, and saves everybody.

 

5] No less a personage than Burke unmistakably signaled this ultimate outcome, by saying, even as he was excoriating Williams, this: “He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone’s trust.”

Turness too, in her statement, turned on a dime from a vituperative rebuke to soothing words promoting Williams: “By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate. Brian’s life’s work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone’s trust.” Apparently not permanently inexcusable.

Turness forgot to mention that which Brian Williams loves most: Himself. (I assume he capitalizes Himself in his mind.)

A fellow self-promoting media hustler, the British import Piers Morgan, ran defense for Williams: “We surely need to get a collective grip and gain some perspective on all this.” Morgan is another ethics-free, media mountebank who oversaw phone hacking in Britain for a rival newspaper to Murdoch’s rags. The man has a point. Williams already explained all this! As he said, “This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran” by fabricating a self-glorifying ersatz “heroic” narrative oh-so-subtly lionizing himself. Just lighten up, everybody!