Former NBC host Brian Williams has criticized the mainstream media for its support of Joe Biden ahead of the election.
Williams, longtime host of NBC Nightly News before a scandal over Iraq War coverage upended his career, broadcast the comments to The Washington Post.
Jeff Bezos’ newspaper spoke to 10 journalists for a piece called “How Should the News Industry Defeat Trump,” and Williams, now 65, had some stern words for his fellow journalists.
He gave the insight after more than three years out of the spotlight, claiming it was “crushing” to watch journalists try to cover a “visibly struggling” Biden.
He also criticized the diction used by his contemporaries to describe the fading Democrat, calling it “lazy, paralyzing and normalizing in a time of urgency and urgency.”
The very public undressing comes a decade after an erroneous report demoted him to the more idiosyncratic MSNBC, a move that many at the time equated to sending a Major League player back to the minors.
He then spent five years at the progressive news network before quitting in 2021 after a more than 40-year career in broadcasting.
At the time, the New Jersey native described the decision as “the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one.” His old seat at Nightly News has since been filled by Lester Holt, previously the anchor of the show’s weekend edition.
Brian Williams, longtime host of NBC Nightly News before a scandal surrounding his coverage of the Iraq War upended his 11-year run, broadcast the comments to The Washington Post.
after more than three years out of the spotlight, he claimed it was “crushing” to see journalists trying to cover a “visibly struggling” Joe Biden, seen here at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last August
Williams opened Tuesday by comparing today’s broadcasts to those of the 1970s, saying, “Everything about our country has changed except the language used to describe it.”
“Listen to correspondents’ final reports, and you’ll hear a virtual F8 key of clichéd old phrases from another time in American life and politics,” he continued, before appearing to poke fun at those still in the industry.
‘My personal favorite is ’emergency measure’, a phrase you only hear on the air and never in the course of your life.
“Part of me dies when I hear that a cabinet choice ‘raises eyebrows,’” he continued, offering more sound bites.
‘[O]r, even worse, “arousing anger”) because the [intended] nominee is a “firebrand”’.
“Sending shockwaves through Washington” was another common phrase, with Williams in turn commenting, “Good Lord, anything but shockwaves through Washington.”
“The problem, of course, is that this language is lazy, stultifying, and normalizing at a time of urgency and urgency,” he continued, at this point stating the actual mission of his piece.
“It’s actually insulting and a gross disservice to those watching and listening because it doesn’t match what they just saw or heard for themselves.”
Williams, once a figure synonymous with American news, has made few public appearances recently after retiring in 2021. He’ll be seeing her on Late Night With Seth Myers in November.
Without naming names, the man who worked for years with the likes of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski offered a final parting shot to those who refused to face the truth.
“It was crushing to see so many working journalists trying to come up with the words to accurately describe a visibly struggling and weakened president, seemingly unable to complete a sentence or thought in his disastrous and final debate.”
Without naming names, the man who worked for years with the likes of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski offered one final parting shot to those who refused to face the truth.
Say it with me: It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the 2024 electoral collapse of the Democratic Party was caused in large part by the man who ran to save the country and democracy—the same man who then ran for too long tried to stay the fair.
“There, I said it,” he added by way of signing off. ‘Please say it into the microphone. You can do it.’
Just over three years ago, the once synonymous with the American airwaves told colleagues how “after much thought” he was leaving the company that made him famous.
“This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one,” Williams wrote at the time, after joining NBC News in 1993.
“There’s a lot of things I want to do, and I’ll show up again somewhere,” he said, before disappearing into relative obscurity.
A few years earlier, in 2015, a scandal saw him ousted from the seat he had accepted from the legendary Tom Brokaw in 2004 after he was caught lying about a war story.
“It was crushing to watch so many working journalists struggle to find the words to accurately describe a visibly struggling and weakened president, seemingly unable to complete a sentence or thought in his disastrous and final debate,” Williams wrote. at some point.
A few years earlier, in 2015, a scandal ousted him from the seat he had accepted from the legendary Tom Brokaw in 2004, after he was caught lying about a war story.
Williams (center) previously used his platform to claim that a helicopter he was traveling in while reporting on the war was “forced down after being hit by an RPG.” The account turned out to be a lie
He claimed in his newscast that a helicopter he was traveling in while covering the war was “forced down after being hit by an RPG.”
The military publication Stars and Stripes caught him in the lie after being tipped off by someone there that day.
The government-run newspaper then contacted Williams, who in turn admitted he was not in the helicopter that was downed by enemy ground fire.
“I wouldn’t have made that mistake,” he said by way of explanation, after apologizing on air. “I don’t know what happened in my head to make me merge one plane with another.”