Nobody enjoyed playing the role of the top dog news anchor more than Brian Williams. 
Like Richard Sherman though, if a player’s annoying arrogance can be backed up by a glance at the scoreboard and a resume full of “been there, done that” – well, it is what it is.
No matter what you thought about Williams’ affect, at the end of the day, he was still Brian Williams – sitting atop the world of TV news at $10-million a year.
Scoreboard. Deal with it.
But setting yourself up like that has a potential downside too, and that is that if you fall – it’s a big one – and people aren’t exactly going to come rushing to your defense. Some might even give you a kick on the way down.
So now here’s Brian – the late-night talk-show guest – the Managing Editor of NBC news – and the nation’s number-one-rated national news anchor… sitting in the corner for a six month timeout. That’s an eternity in media-land, and my guess is that he will never fully return.
America likes to give people second chances, but when you combine self-aggrandizement with a “stolen valor” story – the old “been there, done that” schtick is going to fall flat, and stay there.
I will also add however that competing media members barely-contained glee over Brian’s demise is unseemly. This isn’t good news for anybody – even if you’re regularly having your ass handed to you by Brian in the ratings.
So why would Williams make up a “been there, done that” story like he allegedly did with the whole brush-with-death thing in Iraq? I think it’s because the human animal can never get “enough.”
No matter how high you climb, it seems to me that ego-driven people often think there’s another rung on the ladder that they “should” be grasping. I mean at what point does the most recent exploit, the big story, the tale of conquest, or the next mountain to climb – become the last one? When is enough, enough? For people who tend toward Brian Williams’ “type” – I would posit that the answer is, “never.”
I will also theorize that when a personality type like that is operating in the, “What have you done for me lately?” environment of TV news – it’s probably a recipe for just this kind of a thing.
People keep asking me what I think about this story, which is why I wrote this.
I think it’s sad. I think fabricating the news is the end of the line for a journalist. I think I’m actually a little worried about how Brian Williams’ is able to handle this because it’s probably going to feel something like the death in the family. I think other journalists need to clam up a little and let NBC management and the viewing public make the final decision about whether Williams can find his way back.
