If this was intended as a defense of discredited NBC Nightly News anchor/fabulist Brian Williams, ex-MSNBC ringleader Keith Olbermann should have bitten his tongue instead.
Appearing on Late Show with David Letterman last night, Olbermann described Williams as a friendly acquaintance of nearly 20 years and scrupulous newsman who takes "personal responsibility" for errors in his newscast, even if someone else makes them.
But Olbermann couldn't refrain from offering shaky apologia, with Letterman jumping aboard for the ride --
OLBERMANN: Because here's the bottom line -- let's say tomorrow for some reason we were both news correspondents and we were sent to cover Iraq. My report from Iraq would be -- I got up in a helicopter and I crapped my pants (laughter from the audience), and now back to Tom Snyder in New York. And I would have been proud of that! (Letterman laughs). The thing that's being left out of this is, to have supposedly exaggerated stories in Iraq -- he had to have been in Iraq! To supposedly have seen a guy who may or may not have floated down the flood in (New Orleans after Katrina hit), he's there, he was there! And the embellishments, such as they may or may not be, don't really add anything to the story!
LETTERMAN (joining in craven coward shtick): You're absolutely right about one thing -- if I'm in a helicopter, I don't care what relationship physically, geographically to another helicopter ...
OLBERMANN: Exactly ...
LETTERMAN: ... that gets shot down, well, that's all, take me back to the admirals' club (laughter), I want my nuts and my cocktails, I'm done!
OLBERMANN: I once went in a helicopter from Springfield, Mass., to Needham, Mass., for a story at Channel 5 in Boston in 1984. I led the newscast with it that night. I survived! (laughter). You don't need more than that! So what I'm saying is, I don't know what it is, but I think whatever it is has got to be solvable and fixable, and knowing Brian I sure hope so.
LETTERMAN: One would hope, in this day and age, that this can be overcome, for God's sake.
Psst, Keith -- it wasn't Williams' reporting from Iraq (2003) and New Orleans (2005) that got him booted off the air for six months (2015). It was his peculiar penchant for recounting war tales that got taller in the retelling, and from highly visible media stages -- such as the Letterman show.
It began to unravel for Williams with a Jan. 30 report on NBC Nightly News when he paid tribute to an Army combat veteran, Tim Terpak, who was retiring after 24 years of service. During the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Williams reported, his military helicopter was hit by an enemy RPG and forced down. Williams and his news team were "rescued" and "kept alive" by Terpak's mechanized platoon, Williams claimed in his tribute.
The story was challenged by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which reported that Williams and his crew were on a helicopter flying 30 minutes to an hour behind the one that was brought down. Williams apologized and took himself temporarily off the air -- and an onslaught ensued of dubious other claims made by Williams, including that of the body he allegedly saw floating on a flooded street outside his hotel in New Orleans.
Williams did not "supposedly" exaggerate what he experienced in Iraq, as Olbermann claims -- he has apologized for doing so, and this was the reason he initially took himself off NBC for a suspension expected to last several days. It was during the deluge that followed, which included such whoppers as boasting he was in Berlin on the night the Wall came down (and claiming this at the Reagan Library, no less) that the temporary suspension was extended to six months without pay, in effect a $5 million fine.
Olbermann and Letterman make a fair point about the obvious dangers of reporting from a war zone -- NBC's David Bloom and Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly both lost their lives at the start of the war in Iraq, and ABC's Bob Woodruff was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in 2006. But as with our military, media duty during hostilities is voluntary -- and not approached lightly.
But Olbermann's suggestion that reporting from places where journalists are at risk gives them license to cut loose is absurd. Agreed, we should honor the bravery of those who go -- and those who actually fight, far more. But when life and death is at stake and not just a cliche, a higher standard should kick in, not the low bar of anything goes.
