How an anchor set public trust adrift

DOES IT MATTER if Brian Williams ever returns to his anchor chair?

Not to me. I'm not among the 26 percent of Americans watching network news daily.

But his story is important - for what it tells us about ourselves, for what it means to journalism.

On one level it's familiar: a person in a powerful position pulled down by his own faults; a case of obvious intelligence overridden by judgment gone AWOL.

We see such stories regularly. It's just that this one involves someone at the pinnacle of a profession who's supposed to seek the truth yet, sadly, seems to have trouble knowing it when he sees it.

The "NBC Nightly News" boss, who early in his career (1986-87) worked in Philly at WCAU-10, makes $10 million-plus a year, according to media reports after he signed a new, five-year contract in December.

He has success, fame and honors including multiple Emmys, multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Walter Cronkite Award and a Peabody.

And now a suspension - last night NBC News decided to suspend him for six months without pay for his penchant for revising what he saw or experienced while covering news in Iraq, Israel, New Orleans and who knows where else.

If it was one thing, if it was only not getting hit in a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq, he'd likely be OK.

But it's not one thing.

It's several. It's post-Katrina stories about seeing a man commit suicide in the Superdome, being threatened by gangs while staying at the New Orleans Ritz-Carlton and watching a body float by the hotel, none of which are supported by witnesses.

It's talking about how a rocket passed just 1,500 feet below an Israeli helicopter he was in, another debunked story, and ending a version of that story by telling Jon Stewart, "They're firing real bullets over there. Any time you want to cross over to the other side, travel with me."

Reaction has been a lot like philly.com online reaction to almost anything - which is to say acidic.

As David Brooks wrote yesterday in the New York Times, "A sort of Coliseum culture takes over, leaving no place for mercy."

There's something to that. We are quick to judge. And we tend to look at pieces of a story and believe the worst a lot more than we tend toward tolerance.

Still, how exactly does Williams survive?

The Washington Post reports that Nielsen ratings show a 36 percent drop in "NBC Nightly News" viewers in the week since he "apologized" for misremembering his Iraq helicopter experience.

A Rasmussen Reports poll says 40 percent of Americans think Williams should resign. And that poll was taken when the only issue was the chopper in Iraq.

Williams has been off air and silent since last week. He canceled a prescheduled appearance tomorrow on "The Late Show With David Letterman." Last night NBC announced the suspension.

Still, the heart of Williams' case is odd.

His "sin" isn't in reporting. He's not Janet Cooke, who lost a Pulitzer for making up a story of an 8-year-old heroin addict in 1980 in the Washington Post. Or Jayson Blair, caught in plagiarism and fabrication at the New York Times in 2003, or Dan Rather with inauthentic documents questioning George W. Bush's National Guard service on CBS's "60 Minutes" in 2004.

But Williams' public enhancements of what he's covered still hurt journalism.

A reporter's role is to cut through embellishment and reduce exaggeration to fact, to get readers/viewers as close to the truth as possible.

Williams did the opposite, effectively aligning himself with "the other side."

At a time when Gallup polling says trust in the media is at an all-time low, this episode further reduces trust.

And that matters much more than whether Williams ever returns to his anchor chair.

Blog: ph.ly/BaerGrowls

Columns: ph.ly/JohnBaer