Brian Williams Has Been Released

11/15/2021

He did the crime and now he has done the time. The crime was exaggerating – embellishing – even inventing – a few moments in an otherwise admirable career. In telling and re-telling, he put himself in more dangerous positions covering war than he had actually been – not a good thing for an anchor, a correspondent, a star.

Brian Williams’ punishment was a work-release program. Instead of appearing on the main network of NBC, for the past five years he toiled at 11 PM on MSNBC, the cable version of the network, where he provided gravitas, experience, even grace.

Now Williams has announced he is leaving the network,. He has been a pro, listening to his guests, reacting to what they were saying, or what they were not saying. He presided over a recap of the day’s news and also the latest “breaking news” that never seems to stop. And when their segment was over, he thanked his guests, often with a turn of a phrase. (Wish I could come up with a few right now, but they were unfailingly witty and gracious.)

Some Friday nights, Williams’ handsome face has seemed drawn, his hair more gray, at 61, from dog years on the air. I feel the same way from watching MSNBC -- the same commercials for old-people ailments, plus a parade of hosts, some of whom have lost their charm, who natter on, before finally prodding the guests, who can’t always deduce the question, much less the answer.

And for four years, the whole process was polluted by a president who did not know truth or reality, only what he could stuff in his gunnysack.

It’s not all bad, of course. Andrea Mitchell, the noon anchor, has been there, done that, for decades.
Nicolle Wallace and Lawrence O’Donnell have worked inside government; Steve Kornacki can name every county seat in this huge county. Chris Hayes is best in front of an audience. And the younger correspondents out in the field – too many of them to list -- are darn good reporters,

I remember when Rachel Maddow would go out in the field to report and editorialize about states polluting their own rivers, states doing their darndest to make Black college students dare to vote in some obscure outback. She was wonderful, and urgent. Now she talks. A lot.

Brian Williams, doing his time, pulled the whole day together in the final 60 minutes.

I don’t know whether Williams is looking to rest and spend time with his family (the standard departure goal for politicians, or come up with a fresh gig in a better time in front of much larger network audiences. That’s up to him. I only know that Brian Williams has been a ray of experience and poise. Thanks, man.

Alan Rubin link

11/16/2021 12:03:04 pm

Brian Williams is a comfortable way to wrap up the day's news. His coverage is always steady and on target.

Also, who else keeps track of the days for us.

I miss the days of the Huntley-Brinkly report when the news was intelligently analyzed.

George Vecsey

11/24/2021 05:42:37 pm

Alan, i never did watch news on TV back in those days when I was working, but I did watch a lot of MSNBC upon retirement but I've had it with the format. I'm more comfortable with PBS news and Cristiane Amanpour's great show on CNN INternational and BBC -- am now rooting for Katty Kay to land on one of the US networks where she would be allowed her normal gravitas. best, GV

bruce

11/22/2021 07:12:50 pm

never watch nightly news on any of three major networks in the usa. used to williams on talk shows, but can't remember which ones....daily show with jon stewart?

always seemed very quick witted.

after saying that i don't know what the hell possessed him to make up the story that got him in trouble.

can't remember if i mentioned that i interviewed walter cronkite once.

he mentioned reagan wasn't as smart as he appeared on tv and carter was smarter.....i have to admit i was one of the many non americans i know who could never figure out reagan's popularity.

and i was surprised uncle walter thought reagan appeared smart.

George Vecsey

11/24/2021 05:55:00 pm

Bruce, I understand, the one-off interviews we journalists have, and you never seen that person again. Cronkite may have been acting polite about Reagan, Politics aside, I wanted to giggle when he talked. He seemed empty. Of course Carter was smarter, He was a Rickover guy out of Annapolis.
As for Williams' fall from grace, I can understand. We tell one of our in-the-field journo tales often enough and we are tempted to smooth out the edges, eliminate some of the realistic incongruities, like water smoothing out a stone
I had guns pulledin my presence twice as a reporter, but never pointed at me...Huge difference, Once by a nervous young troooper during a riot ("Are you comfortable with my reaching for my press pass? I asked, calming him down.) And once by a coal watchman who caught me trespassing, (The pistol was for show; my photorapher pal Ken Murray whispered to keep edging tward the state road...and we did....and the guy told us to get lost.)
Better story if either guy had actually pointed the weapon. Glad it never happened...
It's important to fight the impulse. I wish Williams had...Then again, we got a very poised and experienced TV anchor at the end of the day....
best to you, G.

bruce

11/24/2021 06:03:37 pm

george,

it's 35 years ago now--!!again--but if memory serves he was talking about how his ideas had evolved since the early days of TV.

he said when he first started he thought the camera was a kind of xray which would expose people when they lied..

changed his opinion as time went on.

bruce

Alan D. Levine

11/30/2021 01:16:14 pm

I like to count how many times Rachel Maddow repeats the same thing. When she gets to seven, I change the channel. I've cut my MSNBC viewing time. Chris Matthews used to call it the place for politics. But it's really the place for prosecutors--and retired FBI agents--and retired CIA agents--and so-called moderate Republicans.

bruce

11/30/2021 01:29:31 pm

alan,

i don'r watch that network.

i've got cnn....both are on loops all day.

you're right about the guests.

as for fox...never watch it..

i remember when the toronto sun came into existence about 50 years ago after toronto went from three dailies to two. many of the sun's journalists came from the remains of the telegram which had folded.

the sun was a splashy tabloid with many big photos, a right wing slant, lots of blood and guts.

it was called the paper for people who couldn't read.

bruce

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12/1/2021 06:31:43 am

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QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

Brian Williams Has Been Released

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