Back in February of this year, Brian Williams, a journalist of 10 years at NBC, got himself into a sticky situation after NBC Nightly News posted a Facebook clip of Williams reminiscing on an experience he had while in Iraq in 2003.
Lance Reynolds, a passenger in the helicopter that went down, wrote in a Facebook comment responding to the Williams segment, writing “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.”
There were also other occasions when Williams fabricated the experience he had while in Iraq; in an interview with David Letterman back in 2013 and also during an interview with Alec Baldwin on WNYC’s “Here’s the Thing.”
With the power of social media, word spread quickly about the incident forcing Williams to come clean about what really happened.
According to the Washington Post, while on the air, Williams said, “I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft.”
After Williams’s public apology and loss of credibility, he decided to take himself of the broadcast for a few days while they further investigate the situation. He was then suspended from NBC.
Yes, Williams has lost credibility to most of his viewers, but he has been in the broadcasting field for over 30 years and 20 of those years have been with NBC.
Aside from lying for a good story, he is a good news anchor.
After seven months off camera, Williams made his debut in a new position as breaking news anchor at MSNBC on Tuesday September 22, 2015 with two-hour news coverage of Pope Francis’ visit to the US, according to the New York Times.
Andrew Lack, head of NBC News and MSNBC told the New York Times “The news is the star, we are building a network that has as its core value delivering breaking news better than anyone else. It is not about the anchor who happens to be delivering the news.”
Brian Williams did everything right by publicly apologizing, although people claimed it was unsentimental, resigning from his position and not doing any interviews and keeping a low profile.
If things would have played out differently during the scandal, he may not have been offered the breaking news anchor position.
Because Williams followed the necessary requirements for a crisis, according to public relations crisis management, I believe this is the right decision to give him another chance and put him back on the air.
With this new fresh start as the breaking news anchor, we could expect him to remain quite about the scandal and for him to do his job in the upmost professional manner to rebuild his reputation as a journalist.
At least let’s hope.
Something tells me you wouldn’t have this position if he worked for Fox.