The recent controversy over NBC news anchor Brian Williams is unfortunate. Here’s a man who has made a long career out of delivering the news. He worked very hard at it. Now by doing this, he’s expected to tell the facts and just give us the story. No need to embellish or add his opinion. But Williams recently was busted when his account of what happened to him while he was reporting in Iraq, didn’t jive with a couple of soldiers who were there. Williams admitted that he got it wrong. But now it appears he may have embellished facts in other stories he reported on. So why did he do it?
Ratings.
Reporters are taught at an early age, “What bleeds, leads”, meaning the story that is the most interesting or shocking leads the news cast. Seems to me that Williams took it a step further and realized if he was going to win the ratings war, he couldn’t just report the news, he had to become a story teller. Our culture has always been fascinated with great storytellers. Paul Harvey was one of the best. But with Williams, he added details to a story, almost as if to make himself appear a hero or a victim that suffered through hardship to bring you the story. And in the words of George Costanza from Seinfeld fame, “It’s not a lie, if you believe it”.
I was taught by one of the best Talk Radio Program Directors that it’s about ‘ratings and revenue’. He would often say with a smile, “don’t let the facts get in the way of a great talk show”. Now he wasn’t teaching me to lie, but with Talk Radio, it’s about entertaining the audience. TOTALLY different than delivering the NEWS. I can tell you that I have embellished facts many, many times when doing a talk show. I never provided inaccurate information in giving details of a story, but I would stretch things a bit to get a rise out of the audience. And it worked. But again, and I can’t stress this enough, there is an enormous difference between doing a radio talk show, and reporting the facts of a news story. A talk show host and a news anchor/reporter are not the same thing.
So should Williams be fired? The real question is, will viewers, seeking the news, trust Williams when he returns from his 6 month suspension? There will most likely always be a question in the back of their mind every time they hear him deliver a news story or give his account of “what happened”. The damage has been done. You can’t squeeze toothpaste back into the tube. It’s out there.
We've all told stories of things that have happened to us, and I would bet most of us have embellished them a bit from time to time. Why? It makes for a more interesting story. But telling a friend a "tall tale" is much different that being a respected journalist, fudging the facts. I worked with a guy in radio awhile back that told so many wild stories, you never knew what was the truth. He made up stories about playing professional baseball and serving in a special division of our military. When I and a few co-workers looked into some of these accounts, none of them added up. So every time this fella would tell us a new story, we always took it with a grain of salt. I imagine that's what many Nightly News viewers will be doing with Brian Williams (if/when) he returns. And that's a shame~
-Greg Browning
Morning Show Host
Classic Hits 104-5 WJJK
Greg@1045WJJK.com
