Media Scandals

Joe Scarborough's defense of Brian Williams amounts to a warning to people in the media and politics: I know a lot about many of you, too. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough ominously said: "in over a decade in this news business, it is fair to say looking straight in the camera, I've seen a lot, I know a lot, and I know that there are very few people in this industry or in politics that could…

Friday morning on Fox and Friends, Geraldo Rivera, echoing Rathergate, the 2004 scandal which put the blogosphere and New Media on the map to stay and accelerated its growth, reacted to the Brian Williams debacle by denouncing those criticizing the NBC Nightly News anchor "from the safety of their mother's basement," telling them that they should just "shut up." Saturday, in a pair of tweets…

This is for the "false memories" and "he's an untouchable 'brand' crowds defending Brian Williams, who this afternoon announced that he has "decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days." At the 2-minute mark of the 2007 interview with a collegiate reporter following the jump, watch Williams speak of his alleged brushes with danger, including how he "looked down the…

At USA Today Friday afternoon, two of its reporters came down on the side of Brian Williams in the controversy over what even the often media-enabling Associated Press has called his "fake Iraq story." Roger Yu tried to portray Williams as a victim of a "synergistic stretch" who is now having to defend himself against the "firestorm on the Internet and social media," while Marisol Bello, who…

On Friday's CBS This Morning, substitute co-host Jeff Glor introduced a report on the growing scandal surrounding NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams by proclaiming: "This morning, one of the biggest names in media is fighting for his reputation....On Wednesday, Williams said he was sorry for saying his helicopter in Iraq was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in 2003. That never happened. It's…

Conan O'Brien poked fun of NBC's Brian Williams on the late Thursday/early Friday edition of his TBS program over his false Iraq War claim. O'Brien played a montage of the anchor's own footage from NBC Nightly News, but edited it to insert the journalist into news events from recent years – including having Williams fly the "Miracle on the Hudson" plane landing in 2009 and make the first ascent…

If Brian Williams or any of the executives at NBC thought that the controversy over his "fake Iraq story" might start to die down, developments this evening have proven that they were sadly mistaken. The quoted words in the previous sentence are from a headline at an Associated Press story by David Bauder, the wire service's TV writer. The fact that the nation's self-described "essential global…

As NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams became embroiled in a major controversy on Thursday over his false story of being shot at in Iraq, he joined a growing list of NBC journalists whose credibility has been shredded in recent months in the wake of various scandals.

On Thursday's New Day, CNN's Brian Stelter contented that Brian Williams's false account about his helicopter coming under attack in Iraq in 2003 "just does not pass the smell test," and added that "this is a serious blow to [his] credibility." He also underlined that "all those times in the past where...the story got murkier over time – that seems like it was maybe intentional, and not just an…

As Curtis Houck at NewsBusters reported last night, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is in serious trouble after he, in Houck's words, "admitted to not being aboard a helicopter that was shot and had to be rescued following RPG fire during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003." Williams's apology, also carried at Houck's post, only refers to the "mistake" he made "on this broadcast last…

Brian Williams brought on infamous Ebola quarantine violator Dr. Nancy Snyderman on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News for her take on the resurgence of measles. Dr. Snyderman underlined that "it's inherently important that those of us who are healthy vaccinate ourselves to protect those who are less vulnerable in society. That's why it's called public health." Of course, the NBC chief medical editor…

NBC foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin suggested that Chris Kyle, the real "American Sniper," was a "racist" whose military missions were nothing less than "killing sprees." Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, NBC has yet to issue an apology.

On Saturday, in a post titled "Political Correctness Kills in Paris, Terrifies Media," Jeffrey Lord at NewsBusters cited how the New York Times, in covering the Charlie Hebdo massacre, deliberately changed a story subject's quote from what it originally reported. This post will show how the message massagers at the Times subsequently went another step further, attempting to convince readers that…

In St. Louis County, police have arrested 19 year-old Joshua Williams and charged him (HT Gateway Pundit) with committing "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft" at the QuikTrip convenience store in Berkeley, Missouri on Christmas Eve. Williams "has confessed to the crimes." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gets today's prize for most absurd headline, as seen after the jump (…