Fox Newsies are very disturbed that a news anchor caught lying may have been “too big to fire.” Were they talking about Bill O’Reilly? No, Brian Williams.
On Outnumbered, the five Fox News cohosts discussed the announcement that Williams will no longer anchor the NBC Nightly News. They played a clip from his interview with Matt Lauer aired earlier today.
WILLIAMS: What has happened in the past has been torn apart and dealt with by me and has been fixed and has been dealt with and going forward, there are going to be different rules of the road.
…I get this. I am responsible for this. I am sorry.
But that wasn’t good enough for those standard-bearers of journalism (for others) at Fox News.
Cohost Harris Faulkner complained, “Williams did not specifically, though, say he lied. But that he told the story correctly for a long time and then he told it incorrectly for a long time. He blames it all on his ego.”
Cohost Katie Pavlich was harsher. She said scoldingly, “He didn’t tell something incorrectly. I mean, we all as journalists have gotten facts incorrect. …We make mistakes. …But there is a difference between making up entire stories, including one about the helicopter, where he stole the valor of military men and women by making up that story, and getting something incorrect.
Pavlich sneered that in going to MSNBC Williams was getting “a venue where he can do what he wants without accountability.”
Faulkner asked whether NBC thought Williams “too big to fire.”
“Yes!” exclaimed cohost Andrea Tantaros. “The powers that be over at MSNBC and NBC knew that he was fabricating things for years. He became bigger than the channel. …The bosses were scared because he was such a huge personality.”
“When you think about it,” Tantaros continued, “Brian Williams was the face of that entire network, basically, at NBC News. It was almost like they were too intimidated to pull him aside and say, ‘Hey listen, we know you’re making stuff up. Quit it.’”
“Punch” Tantaros said she’s willing to forgive Williams but “I just didn’t like that he didn’t apologize.” Even though he had, right there in the clip just played.
But you know who hasn’t apologized, hasn’t even owned up to making things up? Why, the guy who many think is the face of Fox News, Bill O’Reilly. Evidence of his untruthfulness has surfaced regarding his exaggerated accounts of reporting on the Falklands war in Argentina, his false claim of being at the door of a man involved in the JFK assassination investigation just as he committed suicide, his misleading claims to have witnessed Irish terror attacks and the execution of nuns in El Salvador.
Unlike NBC News, which suspended and then demoted Williams, Fox News circled the wagons.
Watch the selective concern for truth telling, below, from today's Outnumbered.
If nothing else, this incident shows what a news organization with actual journalistic standards handles things, versus one with no journalistic standards.
And yet so many people watch this network for idiots, and think everything they say is correct! Nauseating.
I console myself by remembering that Fox-watching members of my family live in NY, so no matter which of the GOP clown car they end up voting for, they still won’t win the state.
Oddly enough, Hannity defended him, or at least defended the idea that everybody should lay off him and he didn’t need to be thrown into the wilderness with no job by NBC. “I believe in forgiveness,” sez Sean. Well, no, not usually, boy-o.
