TJ Walker analyzes Brian Williams' helicopter story controversy in Iraq. Williams apologized on air after others disputed his account, and Walker argues the quick apology likely saved his job, though the incident will follow him in future interviews.
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Its crisis communications. Time for NBC anchor brian williams. So this is a rather bizarre situation, ladies and gentlemen. About a dozen years ago, Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor who at the time was a reporter for NBC, claimed that he was in a helicopter that was shot down in Iraq. This story has been repeated. He's talked about it on David Letterman, other programs, and now it turns out it's not true. The people who were shot down said, I don't remember you on our helicopter. I remember you coming up an hour later asking, what happened. Well, this all came up very quickly this week. And Brian Williams, to his credit, reacted quickly in the best possible way. Here's what he said to the person accusing him of not having his facts straight. He said, quote, you are absolutely right and I was wrong. And the fog of memory over 12 years made me conflate the two. The difference between being on the helicopter that went down versus just being in a helicopter. And, and I apologize. On the evening news last night, he said, this was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not. I hope they know that I have my greatest respect. And also now my apology. So what do we make of this? Dan Rather, his entire career was destroyed at CBS for seemingly a lesser offense. So when it comes to Brian Williams, he did a number of things right here. He said he was wrong, he apologized and he did it very, very quickly. He didn't let this issue percolate and have more and more, more and more stories talking about how he's lying. It's fairly hard to criticize someone when they have said they are wrong and they apologize. You look like a bully at this point. Now, this is a tricky issue for the face of a news organization, a national news organization, especially someone who's getting paid north of $10 million a year to get the facts right. Now, a lot of people say, well, how in the world could you confuse being shot down in a helicopter versus just being. By the way, folks, in the interest of transparency. And I try to do these things as if they were live in one tick. What just happened there is my video loop went out. This is a T screen with a video loop. I'm just going to bend down and hit play on it again. And I hope you don't mind, but I do think for some of you who are interested in the technical setup that you find this interesting. And for those of you who don't, I'm sorry about the inconvenience but so when it comes to Brian Williams, the issue is how much is this going to hurt? Is this going to destroy his career? Is NBC going to have to fire him? I would predict at this point, no, because he acted swiftly. He apologized without reservation. Now I do think it's odd to confuse whether or not you were shot down in a helicopter. That seems like a really big deal. That's not quite like someone saying, I had lasagna for lunch two weeks ago and it turned out that there was actually spaghetti. This was a big deal. But anyone who has studied the human memory knows that what happened to Brian Wynt is really not very uncommon. Human beings memories are notoriously awful. Former President Reagan used to talk about World War II experiences as if he had really been there when he was on a sound studio and production studio out in Hollywood and was never on enemy territory. So it's happened to a lot of people in the past. Now the other thing Brian Williams has going for him is that Dan Rather, for example, did not. Dan Rather was seen, rightly or wrongly, by conservatives to be anti conservative, to be anti Republican, to have bias against them. Brian Williams is not someone who is seen as a huge enemy, as a huge liberal out to destroy Republicans. Here he is going over backwards in his apology, thanking members of the military, reminding everybody that he didn't serve, reminding them of his respect for the military. So to the extent that he's a part of the mainstream media, sure, Republicans and conservatives will always be gunning for him. But he's not somebody that the typical conservative activist, typical Republican activist, has any deep animus for. So that's why I think that Brian Williams will be able to withstand this crisis primarily because of his swift action. However, Brian Williams has not heard the end of this. Every single time he criticizes or does a story that is critical of a high profile politician, that politician is going to say, who are you to judge me? You can't get your facts straight. You can't even tell the difference between being shot down in a helicopter versus flying in later after the fact. He is going to hear that and he's going to hear that for years to come. So he might as well be ready for it. So this is going to be a particularly dangerous time for Brian Williams to interview any politician live when he wants to do a tough interview, because we're going to hear that in the same way the first George Bush in a live interview with Dan Rather attacked him for the time he walked off the set during a tennis match when his broadcast was about to go on. So it's going to be an issue Brian Williams is going to hear about from time to time. But my prediction, it will not destroy his career.
