Brian Williams, the embattled anchor of NBC Nightly News, has pulled out of a Late Show with David Letterman appearance as a cloud of scandal hovers over him. The journalist’s credibility has crumbled as his 2003 Iraq War story turned out to be false and NBC News is currently investigating the repeated lie.
Part of Williams’ image is his wit and ability to tell a good story with a comedian, so it was no surprise to hear that he did have a Letterman appearance scheduled. After announcing on Saturday that he was going to take a leave of absence from Nightly News for “several days,” it was clear that he couldn’t keep that interview.
Deadline confirmed that Williams did cancel and Letterman’s team got Tom Hanks to replace him.
Letterman himself actually became part of the story. Williams repeatedly told the story about being in a helicopter shot by an RPG in Iraq in 2003, including during a 2013 Letterman interview. He told the story again earlier this month, which got him in trouble after veterans revealed that he was not on a helicopter that was shot.
NBC News officially launched an investigation on Friday. NBC News chief Deborah Turness said that Williams later apologized again to the news staff.
Still, bloggers and the media have started doing their own digging into Williams’ past to find other potential questionable stories. His Hurricane Katrina stories are already being criticized and The Washington Post looked into inaccuracies in his stories about covering Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah.
image via B. Ach/INFevents.com