Ministry of Propaganda

 

I was wrong on Friday. I predicted that Brian Williams wouldn’t be sitting at the anchor desk Friday night and, perhaps, never again. He was there Friday night… but he won’t be tonight.

The word came down Saturday that Brian Williams, in his role of Managing Editor of the NBC Nightly News, was taking himself off the air, temporarily.

A Personal Note from Brian Williams

In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions.

As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue. Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.

There’s the first problem. Apparently the president of NBC News, Deborah Turness, isn’t in charge. Shouldn’t she have been the one to make the call? Instead, she sent this memo to the staff on Friday.

All,

This has been a difficult few days for all of us at NBC News.

Yesterday, Brian and I spoke to the Nightly News team. And this morning at the Editorial Exchange, we both addressed the wider group. Brian apologized once again, and specifically expressed how sorry he is for the impact this has had on all of you and on this proud organization.

As you would expect, we have a team dedicated to gathering the facts to help us make sense of all that has transpired. We’re working on what the best next steps are — and when we have something to communicate we will of course share it with you.

Since joining NBC News, I’ve seen great strength and resilience. We are a close-knit family, and your response this week has made that even clearer.

As a relentless news agenda marches on, thank you again for continuing to do what we do best — bring the most important stories of the day to our audience.

Deborah

Yikes. Talk about tone-deaf. She should probably go back and read Nicole Belle’s open letter to her from Sept 2013 since she obviously didn’t get the message the first time.

In addition to being a comedian and hosting her own show, Julianna Forlano is also an adjunct college professor who teaches, among other things, ethics in journalism(!), so we obviously had a few things to talk about this morning!

I also spoke with New Orleans-based attorney Stuart H. Smith who specializes in fighting big oil companies and other polluters, and just published his first book, Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America.

And finally, long time listeners of this program know that Howie Klein has been missing for a few weeks. I had been a bit cryptic about his absence, as it wasn’t up to me to explain his absence. He did it himself this morning with a post at Down with Tyranny titled “Cancer Diaries – Intro.”

Let’s harness the positive power of the universe and send healing thoughts (and prayers if you do that sort of thing) to him…

I’ll be back tomorrow with GottaLaff and whatever else the world throws at us, radio or not!