NBC is surely hoping that people — especially those in the media — will forgive and forget Brian Williams over the next six months, while he serves his suspension from NBC Nightly News.
But that long of a time period will also allow those who cover the media to do some reporting and uncover some information that could be unseemly. We may have seen the beginning of that with a Feb. 10 article written by Gabriel Sherman for New York magazine, posted one day after Williams’ suspension was announced.
Sherman reports that NBC presented “a dossier of Williams’ apparent lies” to the news anchor and his agent at a meeting regarding the suspension with Universal CEO Steve Burke. That would certainly seem to indicate Williams’ alleged tall tales from Iraq and Hurricane Katrina might not be the only circumstances in which he stretched the truth — or outright lied.
Further grumblings from inside the offices of NBC News call into question whether or not Williams can really beat this scandal and keep his job. For instance, the network may even be looking into Williams’ expense accounts. But for the purposes of a pop culture site, this nugget from Sherman’s piece is of particular interest.
“According to two NBC insiders, when the network decided to move on from Jay Leno a few years ago, Williams lobbied NBC executives to give him the host’s chair. ‘Brian wants to be a late-night comedian,’ one former colleague explained. ‘He traded on being Nightly News anchorman-war-reporter to ingratiate himself with Jimmy, Lorne Michaels, and Jon Stewart.'”
Brian Williams hosting The Tonight Show? Anyone who’s seen him as a guest with Jon Stewart, David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon, in addition to his cameo appearances on 30 Rock know that Williams is extremely funny and likely would have thrived in such a role. Viewers also surely would have loved it.
But going from the position of chief NBC News anchor to late-night talk show host? I suppose that makes it clear where Williams’ true ambitions existed. Maybe those snarky jokes about Williams taking over The Daily Show aren’t so far-fetched after all.
[New York]
