My column in The Week today is (probably) the last thing I'll have to say about Brian Williams, in which I ask whether the whole problem stemmed from his apparent need to get out in the field where the action was, which really isn't something we need from a network news anchor:
But even when he says things like, "I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe," the point of the story he's telling - whether it's being told to David Letterman's audience or at a hockey game - seems to be to portray himself as, if not quite heroic, then certainly one who has been a witness to the most harrowing and consequential events. He always heaps praise on members of the military or first responders, yet his stories are full of military terminology and slang, lending them a particular kind of authenticity, one that says that Brian Williams is no naïf.
With all we know now, even those regular self-effacing asides begin to look calculated. As Jay Rosen pointed out, Williams seems to have looked for opportunities to tell and retell the Iraq story. After a while it begins to feel like the point of the story is always the same: I was there. He isn't just a guy who sits behind a desk reading off a teleprompter. He's been in it, and deep, when the shit went down.
Which may or may not be important for Brian Williams' conception of himself (I can't know anything about what's in his head), but why should it matter to any of us? Why does a network news anchor need to be the one wading through the floodwaters or flying into a combat zone?
