As I've said before, any "news" organization that gives Al Sharpton a nightly broadcast isn't exactly concerned with journalistic standards. MSNBC represents the ideological heart of NBC News but, for whatever reason, the media seems shocked to learn that the flagship network news readers share their cable brethren's lack of concern for the truth.
Now we know that Brian Williams has been lying for years, his tendency to misrepresent the facts of his deeds was no secret to his coworkers, and even the top brass at his network knew.
As Maureen Dowd wrote this weekend, Williams' self-aggrandizement was a well-known disaster waiting to happen:
THIS was a bomb that had been ticking for a while.
NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division.
But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and “there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top,” as one NBC News reporter put it.
It seemed pathological because Williams already had the premier job, so why engage in résumé inflation? And you don’t get those jobs because of your derring-do.
"Why engage in résumé inflation" when you already have the top job? Well, that's easy enough to answer. It wasn't about the résumé. It seems that Brian Williams loves Brian Williams the celebrity. He loves hosting Saturday Night Live, he loves appearing on the late night talk shows, and he loves that he's been seated at the crossroads of news and Hollywood-style fame. To be blunt, he appears to enjoy crafting the legend of Brian Williams as a man of danger and international intrigue.
More troubling, though, is the fact that NBC knew all of this was happening - and did absolutely nothing to rein it in. If they were comfortable letting Williams' on-air lies slide, why would anyone assume they aren't comfortable lying about everything else?
The Brian Williams scandal isn't about one man. It's about NBC - the worst, most biased, offender in mainstream media - shredding what little credibility it had left. In knowingly allowing Williams' lies stand as long as they did, by treating the situation as a joke, NBC News proved their detractors right.
NBC News simply can't be trusted to deliver the truth. We all knew it. Now we have proof.
