Events south of the border provide a striking example. When you sign a $50 million contract to read the news, you’re not supposed to start channeling Hans Christian Anderson.
But that is exactly what NBC’s News anchor and managing editor, Brian Williams, did. Williams falsely reported over several years that a helicopter he was aboard during the Iraq War in 2003 came under enemy fire. He claimed his chopper was hit by a rocket propelled grenade, and incoming from AK-47s. It was not. Now the anchorman’s pants are on fire.
Even more astonishing than Williams’ flight into fiction has been the reaction of NBC news president Deborah Turness. She has apparently allowed Williams to self-punish by exiting the newscast for a few days. In the meantime, NBC executives will conduct an internal investigation into the reporting of those events in Iraq back in the day.
As for Williams, he clearly expects to survive the trip to the woodshed: “Upon my return,” he said in a prepared statement, “I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.”
My question would be, “What trust?”
Never mind NBC’s dominance in the TV news ratings over rival networks ABC and CBS, however lucrative that might be; never mind Time Magazine making Williams one of America’s 100 most influential people; forget the dozen Emmys, and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence.
Williams fabricated a self-aggrandizing story about an event that never happened and expected those who knew better, the real-life military pilots involved, to keep their mouths shut. And he did all that from astride the Mount Everest of the TV news business. He characterizes what he did as a “mistake.” The real question is how many other stories were torqued, embroidered, dressed up or invented by the man who followed the legendary Tom Brokaw into the anchor chair?
That is the dilemma facing NBC News. Do they fire Williams for lying to his audience, a narcissistic excess that has endangered NBC’s entire news division, or do they stand by their anchorman because he is too big to fail? Is it a matter of seminal principle or crass public relations, an institutional imperative, or an ugly expediency of the star system?
We’ll soon find out.
In this country, the CBC recently went through a long night of the soul over some of its key on-air personalities taking hefty speaking fees from groups they were reporting on, broadcasters like anchorman Peter Mansbridge, host Amanda Lang, and frequent commentator Rex Murphy, who is technically a freelancer.
Initially, the Corporation was dismissive about stories from my iPolitics colleague Andrew Mitrovica, who made the case that this was bad journalistic practice and an obvious conflict of interest. But as the details of these “pay-for-say” gigs became gamier, the CBC made a wise corporate decision. It stopped its stars from receiving speaking fees from some of the very people they reported on — unless of course you were freelancers like Murphy.
Somebody at the Corporation realized that the only thing a news agency has is its reputation, which must be defended at all costs – an insight the top bananas at NBC would be well advised to emulate.
Meanwhile, the people who run the Globe and Mail seem not to understand that when you pander to politicians, you put all that glorious history in jeopardy.
No serious newspaper should ever permit a sitting prime minister to write his own ticket in its pages. Nor was it the bravest thing the Globe has ever done to allow one of the great blowhards of Canadian politics, outgoing Harper cabinet minister John Baird, to issue his personal report card for his years in office.
The relationship between the current Globe and the Conservative Party has become so close, and so mutually supportive, that basic issues of trust are in play between Canada’s old blue-haired lady and her readership. When the editorial board endorsed Liberal Kathleen Wynne in the last Ontario election and the publisher subsequently reversed that decision in favour of Conservative Tim Hudak, it says everything about editorial integrity. It is the kind of thing that ends up losing a newspaper $33 million dollars in a single year.
What makes these crises of trust in the media so intriguing is that they also apply in the world of politics.
Stephen Harper has so far managed to prosper in a world of political special effects — rappelling soldiers at hockey games, Mounties marching, jets screaming overhead. There is no story line, just a bewildering montage of emotionally charged events that herd voters his way. He is the X-Man of Canadian politics.
And that is a very fortunate thing for him, because he could not and will not survive a sober assessment of his record. Why? Because like Brian Williams, he has told self-aggrandizing tall tales.
Harper recently said that the only veterans’ centres that were closed by his government were the ones with very few clients. In fact, thousands of clients were displaced by the closures, putting tremendous pressure on remaining facilities to absorb them.
The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on several occasions, that the cost of the F-35 jet fighter program was guaranteed by the “contract” with the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. Despite these claims by both the prime minister and his various ministers of defence, including Peter MacKay, there never was a contract to buy the plane at the price the government claimed. The real price is going to be tens-of-billions higher.
At the height of the Wright/Duffy scandal, Harper also claimed that no one in his office knew a thing about the $90,000 gift that Nigel Wright gave to Mike Duffy, a “gift” that Duffy claims he was forced to accept by a domineering PMO. The truth is, more than a dozen people in the PMO knew about the deal, despite Harper’s Brian Williams imitation – at the expense of people like former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page.
If the issue ends up being trust rather than just special effects, we should soon be getting a new anchorman in Ottawa.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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