NBC News' Brian Williams struggled to come clean about lies: 'Maybe I had a brain tumor'

NBC News is a mess and a new report makes that more clear. Vanity Fair looked into the situation at the peacock network, specifically the Brian Williams scandal, noting that the NBC Nightly News anchor struggled to come clean.

Vanity Fair spoke with several NBC insiders, including one who recalled what happened when NBC News executives tried to get Williams to admit that the story about him being in a helicopter that was struck by an RPG in Iraq in 2003 was a lie. Williams could not bring himself to say, “I lied,” the insider said.

“We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied.’ He couldn’t explain what had happened,” the insider told the magazine. “[He said,] ‘Did something happen to [my] head? Maybe I had a brain tumor, or something in my head?’ He just didn’t know. We just didn’t know. We had no clear sense what had happened. We got the best [apology] we could get.”

The report also reveals that NBC News President Deborah Turness did not know that Williams’ interview with Stars and Stripes was going to be on the record. She and then-NBC News chairman Pat Fili-Krushel assumed that Williams spoke with the military newspaper to learn what they were about to publish. Instead, Williams told the reporter that he could be quoted and Stars and Stripes later released the entire interview, in which Williams admitted that the Iraq War story wasn’t completely true. NBC’s public relations staff was stunned.

Williams ended up getting suspended for six months without pay. Fili-Krushel ended up losing her job to former NBC News President Andrew Lack, who was hired last month.

The Vanity Fair piece also went into reservations that the late Tim Russert and now-retired Tom Brokaw had about Williams. Russert, who was the long-time host of Meet the Press, was “bothered” by Williams’ lack of interest in politics and major world events.

image courtesy of B. Ach/INFevents.com

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