Brian Williams Goes to MSNBC – Punishment or Opportunity?

For our money, we think Mary Long, writing for Digital Media Ghost, was 100% on-target when she wrote:

“NBC could’ve easily fired its anchor, as credibility is inarguably key to the role, and he’s already admitted guilt. The cost to fire him wouldn’t be insignificant, of course, but it would be much less than the audience share they’d be risking to keep him on air. That’s all obvious. So NBC’s decision to not let him go is puzzling . . . or is it?  Why does he still have a ‘news’ job at all when he lacks credibility?  Well, someone at NBC obviously knows how to work the crowd – and has a pretty genius plan to boost ratings at another struggling asset where questionable credibility could equal ratings gold: MSNBC.  Today’s tabloid-style news benefits from controversy, so banishing Williams to MSNBC is a calculated move – and one that doesn’t present much of a risk.  For anyone involved. If anything, it’s a coup.”

You can read the rest of Mary’s thoughtful and insightful piece here.

You can see the recent Brian Williams – Matt Lauer Today Show interview here.

A few more articles of interest we came across:

What Brian Williams Said – and What He Should Have Said
Poynter

4 Ways NBC Might Rehabilitate Brian Williams’ Image
National Public Radio

The Truth About Brian Williams — and the Truth
Howard Fencl, Hennes Communications

The Examined Lie
The American Scholar

The most captivating public controversies are the ones where the response reveals more than the transgression. The “pants-on-fire” reaction by the public to Williams’s fabrication, the almost gleeful vehemence expressed on Facebook pages and across the Twittersphere, certainly confirms the seductive pleasure of catching someone red-handed. But this reaction also obscures the underlying messiness of the Big Lie. The gavel-like finality with which Williams was judged absolves us of pondering the deeper questions about how a situation like this one arises. What is the machinery of memory? How does memory concoct the stories we tell about ourselves? The failure to address these questions is unfortunate. The road to Truth might be paved with righteousness, but the precarious relationship all of us have with the past also lends false assurance to the stories that we consider to be objectively true. Condemning Williams and leaving it at that is an all-too-easy response to a much more interesting phenomenon: unintentionally misrepresenting the truth.