"If Walter Cronkite and Jon Stewart had a baby ... its name would be Brian Douglas Williams."--Bruce Springsteen, inducting Williams into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in November.
Jon Stewart's parody was intended and not of self.
The Brian Williams affair is different. It tells us much, and nothing good, about modern American media and politics.
It tells us one thing we surely already knew: The traditional evening network news programs are no longer journalism but half-hour entertainment shows. That's because most people already know by 5:30 p.m. each day everything they think they need to know, thanks to social or partisan media.
It tells us that a premium is thus paid for an engaging show business-inclined personality like Williams, who can compellingly narrate--or emcee--those half-hour presentations. Just as importantly, he also can perform essential outside pop-culture promotion. He can crack jokes in Letterman's chair, or slow-jam with Fallon, or host Saturday Night Live.
It tells us the Williams style has replaced a gruff newshound like Edward R. Morrow or an understated avuncular figure like Walter Cronkite or a gruff, no-nonsense countenance like Chet Huntley or a pleasantly neutral figure like Tom Brokaw.
It tells us, as the rocker-poet Springsteen attested, that the Williams style provides the modern bridge between television news as it once was and television news as Jon Stewart now presents it. Comedic news now actually rivals in prominence and influence the previously cited social and partisan media.
All of those elements combine to feed the raging distrust that is a cancer on contemporary American media coverage of politics, which no longer can present a generally trusted truth.
The Williams affair plays into the hands of Fox, which exists to fragmentize journalism and report "news" from the unabashedly conservative side--and on which the long-incredible talking heads have been bumping into each other to chortle that Williams represents more than himself, but all of the supposedly liberal mainstream media.
Typically, people are choosing sides based not on objective consideration of fact, but either on fandom--whether they like Williams as a personality and celebrity--or partisanship.
Conservatives say Williams is a liberal liar. Liberals say the real liars are on Fox and in lingering vestiges of the Bush-Cheney administration that fraudulently took the nation into war.
None of that goes to the simple, basic issue, the tree we can't see for the forest: Williams is a blowhard, an exaggerator, a man who seems so enamored of his glibness and wit that he tends to get carried away with his engaging storytelling and personal celebrity.
The most telling example of that: Years ago Williams did a perfectly fine television report from Israel about being in a military helicopter and seeing rocket fire six miles away. But then, a few years later, he regaled the aforementioned Jon Stewart by saying on air that the missile flew right under the chopper and that Stewart should feel free to come over to his side and try real journalism where you can get shot.
Williams is too good a storyteller, too large a personality and too big a star not to add flourishes. He tells his stories as improvisational jazz, with riffs that vary from gig to gig.
Should he be more than suspended, but terminated, from anchoring the evening news?
What does it matter?
If he says on the evening news that a plane crashed today, we can still pretty much believe that indeed a plane crashed today. You don't need personal credibility to ask Dr. Nancy Snyderman about the latest health finding.
Since the show is now entertainment--kept around because networks still need a prominent news identity, if not a vital or an actual news role--then Williams ought to still have value for the deft élan with which he emcees the proceedings.
As an audience lure, the return of the prodigal emcee might amount to a ratings bonanza.
The better question, the real question, is where we can go to get serious and reliable news reports anymore.
Fox can give you conservative Republican news. MSNBC can give you liberal Democratic news. Comedy Central can give you sarcastic news. Twitter can give you valuable instant news from anywhere, but it's not vetted for perspective or context and it's told without any consumer certainty in the provider's reliability or stake or even true identity.
So I'm left with what will seem self-serving.
What we need are good, thorough newspapers, in print and online, investing in trained reporters who gather and impart information objectively and accurately and thoroughly, and in seasoned editors who review the content carefully to present it clearly and fairly and responsibly.
I'm not talking about editorials and op-ed columns like this one. Read those and think on them. Agree or disagree. Get glad or get mad. I'm talking about the news pages.
So the real and important lesson of the Brian Williams affair--what we can take from it to make ourselves better--is to read the New York Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/12/2015