TJ Walker analyzes NBC News anchor Brian Williams' trust ratings collapse and what his absence from social media means for his career. Walker examines how the scandal affected the network's ratings and predicts what comes next for Williams at NBC.
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NBC News anchor Brian Williams is seeing his trust rating fall quickly. Williams, still on leave from his anchor post. New polls have come out regarding his popularity or his approval and trust rating. This caught my attention. A lot of other people too. There is a celebrity DBI and they rank people. Brian Williams was the 23rd most trusted person in the country in the United States until recently. He's now 812. No, he's now 800. Excuse me, 800. And he's dropped 812 points. He's at 835 on the list, right behind the guy from Duck Dynasty. And it's an astronomical fault. Now, one of the criticisms, and I had not taken this completely into consideration in my analysis from several days ago, unlike Anderson Williams and a lot of the newer anchors and slightly younger anchors, Brian Williams has never done a single tweet. He doesn't talk to to social media. He's very active going on David Letterman and traditional media and npr, other outlets. But as far as social media, he stayed above the fray. Yes, he has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, but he's never actually tweeted once. So because of that, he's not defending himself. There's an information vacuum. He's off the air now and so all of his enemies can just chew on his bones. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm the biggest Brian Williams defender. I guess I'm one of the few people who's following this controversy closely who doesn't really care. Brian Williams has had a good long run. Ten years is a long time. It's actually higher than average, a greater length of time than average to be an anchorman. He's made, if not $100 million, close to $100 million. So if he never works again another day in his life, he's going to be fine. The question is, what's really fair here? And I think the people who say Brian Williams has lost his trust, he can't anchor the show anymore, they make fair points. But I also do believe that when you look at all the disinformation, all the demagoguery, all the flat out lies that permeate our media to embellish a story that wasn't attacking anyone else, wasn't hurting anyone else's career, in my view is fairly low on the all time greatest crimes list. But I'm here to predict how he's done so far in the crisis and how well he will do. I gave him high points for his initial apology. A lot of other people didn't. And they thought it was too little, not sincere, and they've just used that as fodder for picking at him again and again and again. I have still predicted that if the ratings don't go down and if a lot more damaging information doesn't happen, he'll be able to keep his position as anchor. But if ratings go down and they have gone down slightly Friday night, at least if ratings go down, if his trust value continues falling lower than the Duck Dynasty and NBC loses money, well, then, boom, he's out the door. This is about money, folks. Let's not kid ourselves. But if ratings stabilize and he's back on the air, we'll see him for a long time. To me, the big significant thing will be will he be on the air in another week? If he is still on leave, then I think NBC is sending a signal that they're putting him out, hanging him out to dry, and they're scrambling for someone to replace him. If he's back on the air after only being gone for one week, then I think that NBC has decided they will keep him. And the people don't like it tough. So stay tuned. Right now, it's a bit of an odd situation where Brian Williams isn't really doing crisis communication. Only his enemies are doing it. They're communicating all the reasons he should be fired. If NBC is serious about wanting to keep him and preserve him, they're going to have to put some other people out there, social media, talk shows, other venues to defend him. Otherwise, they might as well get rid of him now.
