Fire Brian Williams of NBC for Iraq War helicopter lie? Ask Tom Brokaw

By Will Stabley | February 6, 2015

The trouble with Brian Williams is we lack the context to know whether this is an honest man who made a mistake, or a serial aggrandizer who finally got caught. Networks like to present their anchor as a neutral guy who just reads a script. But the anchor is the most powerful person in the building, with significant influence over which stories make it to air and how they’re slanted, as we learned from the secret villainy of Tom Brokaw.

Before I trust a news anchor to give me an honest representation of the facts, I want to know all about him. Who did he end up voting for? What does he think about the war? I don’t need him to agree with me on these things. I just want to understand the filter through which these stories are passing when I hear them from any given anchor.

I grew up believing in Tom Brokaw, who seemed to be as factual and impartial as could be. But after he retired from the desk it turned out he was a big Tea Party supporter and spent the entire Bush era manipulating behind the scenes what made it on the air at NBC (and even supposedly liberal MSNBC) in order to make Bush and his wars look better. Was Brokaw just a man who lost his marbles in his old age and tried to ruin the reputation he had built? Or was he always secretly a tea party type? How far back did his manipulation go? How many decades was he misleading us? And the truth is, we’ll never know. Because the news anchor format ensured that we never learned a thing about him one way or the other until it was too late to matter. Brokaw, with his extremist political views far outside the American mainstream, still had a right to report the news. But didn’t we also have a right to know who he really was?

Brian Williams has done more to put himself out there. He’s appeared self effacing on comedy shows, which makes him likable but doesn’t speak to trust. Does anyone know how he votes or how he personally views the issues he’s informing us on? Some people would say that shatters the illusion of neutrality. I say it’s an illusion that should be shattered. Every news anchor filters stories through their own views and beliefs, whether they intend to or not. I’d like to see news reporters start coming with the same kind of ingredient lists you find on food products. They don’t have to be perfect. I just like to know what’s inside what I’m consuming.

I like Brian Williams. Unless it turns out there’s a pattern here, I hope he keeps his job. And I want to trust him. I just don’t know him well enough to fully trust him before or after this incident. Because see. I wanted to trust Tom Brokaw too – and he turned out to be Dick Cheney wearing a wig.