Nance Greggs: An Open Letter to Brian Williams

[DemocratsForProgress]

RE your appearance on The Daily Show, August 15, 2012

Dear Sir:

I was at once appalled and amused by your comments during your appearance on The Daily Show. But then, I am always appalled and amused when it comes to the topic of the so-called “news media” these days; appalled by the lack of actual news reporting, and amused that people like yourself continue to pretend that what you offer is even remotely connected to actual journalism.

Stewart opened the interview with, “Let’s talk about Paul Ryan. All I have heard from the news divisions across network platforms is how thrilled they are to have Paul Ryan – now they can finally talk substance. When is that going to start happening?”

Your response, “As soon as we exhaust all of our reporting on his driving of the Wiener Mobile while a young man,” was witty and laughter-inducing, as is appropriate for a “fake news” program. The problem is the remark is much closer to the truth than it should be. And that, sir, is no laughing matter.

The Wiener Mobile story is just the kind of nonsense we have come to expect from the TV news media – not in addition to actual news, but in place of it...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2012/08/18/an-open-letter-to-brian-williams/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Well done, my dear Nance...

It makes me sad to see/hear how far our news programs have fallen from their former purpose.

You have illustrated this in your own perfect way.

I wish you hadn't had to do it...



K&R

[upaloopa]

3. The Daily show is a news program? Why is it on the comedy channel?

[upaloopa]

2. They can give it but sure can't take it.

I remember seeing videos of one of Franklin Roosevelt's campaigns and he made fun of and laughed at the repuglicans all the time.

[Jim__]

4. Excellent letter! I wish I could believe it would have an effect.

But when newsrooms became profit centers, ratings became more important than integrity. I wonder if young people today recognize the con that is being played on them.

[rgbecker]

5. It gets worse.

He only drove the wiener car around the block, once.

[Merlot]

6. All I could think after that appearance was "Brian Williams is really wierd"

And not in a funny way, more in an out of touch, scary kind of way. Really the jokes about his dog were just awful, cringe inducing moments. Especially the last one. I actually preferred it when they were talking about pryan - the idea of williams putting himself on a higher journalistic level than Stewart was a hoot. Stewart does some really good interviews with his serious guests (when he's booked someone with more substance than Robert Patterson, for example). When Stewart was on williams show, williams wanted to talk about trivial stuff and Stewart was actually trying to have a conversation.

williams is weird.

[eggplant]

8. He and Jon Stewart have been friends for ages

They went to college together, I believe. Whenever he is on (and it is fairly frequent, actually) they have a great time giving each other shit. Williams loves it because he doesn't have to maintain his "newsman" persona on Jon's show, he can be stupid and silly. Jon gives it back to him whenever he says something he knows will generate angry letters, telling people to send them to Williams.

They both know that The Daily Show is just shtick, and they have a good time.

[lolly]

22. I think the "went to college together" thing was another joke

Started after a particularly acerbic exchange between the two.

Stewart showed photoshopped pictures of the two at the prom, in the lab, etc.

As for them both knowing that "The Daily Show is just a shtick," well, ask Tucker Carlson and James Carville about that one.

They apparently enjoy a cordial relationship off camera, but Stewart's mockery of the state of the news is real, not "just shtick," and Williams as is guilty as anyone of the sort of lazy journalism mocked on the show.

Perhaps Williams is clueless about how ridiculous he looks, and how many people are on to it now.

[freshwest]

7. The media is complicit in hiding the hard facts, which is what R-R pays for...

[pacalo]

9. I hope this is sent to both Brian Williams & Jon Stewart, but EVERYONE in the "news" industry

should read this. The truth in it made me angry.

My favorite excerpt:

There is one event that I knew heralded the decline of TV news journalism, and that is the fact that newscasters such as yourself did not immediately distance yourselves from what Fox News was doing from its inception. I would have expected real journalists to decry the concept of an alleged “news network” skewing the news in such an obvious way, and blatantly acting as the propaganda arm of the Republican party. I would have expected journalists with integrity to state, without hesitation, that such obvious bias in reporting the news was contrary to the principles of true journalism.

Instead, the other news broadcasters looked at Fox’s numbers and began to emulate their techniques: offer opinion rather than fact, offer commentary in place of an unbiased presentation of current events, offer airtime to politicians without ever questioning their statements of alleged fact. So much for putting journalistic integrity above ratings.

[renate]

15. THIS

Absolutely right.

[Scuba]

26. + another

[Skittles]

10. THANKS NANCE

[avebury]

11. K&R nt

[DeSwiss]

12. K&R

[limpyhobbler]

14. +1

Happy to say I have no idea what the weinermobile is.

[DeSwiss]

18. The weinermobile is one more man-made construct.....

...signifying nothing. Its innards filled with empty calories and even less thought which dwells within this vast landscape of consumer iconography, we call America. I suppose it signifies an American's right to become a mobile dick or something like that (all meat and no brains but it moves fast!). It makes little sense either way one looks at it. And yet apparently there is no escaping the inanity of it all.

- It is the price we pay for liberty or what passes for it these days......

''The average American spends about one third of his or her waking life watching television. The neurological implications of this are so profound that they cannot even be comprehended in words, much less described by them.

Television creates our reality, regulates our national perceptions and our interior hallucinations of who we Americans are (the best and only important tribe on the planet.)

It schedules our cultural illusions of choice, displays pre-selected candidates in our elections, or types of consumer goods. It regulates holiday marketing opportunities and the national neurological seasons, which are now governed by the electrons of the illusion.

We live within a media generated belief system that functions as the operating instructions for society. Anything outside of its parameters represents fear and psychological freefall to the faceless legions within it.''

~Joe Bageant, The Simulacran Republic

R.I.P. - Joe Bageant ~ 1946-2011

[MichaelSoE]

23. Bask in the glory of the weinermobile

[The Wizard]

13. We get pablam and propaganda, not news

Slowly the American public is getting as cynical as the Soviet citizens got toward their official news. As I've stated many times before on DU. I stopped watching the news during the Clinton witch hunt in 98 when not one news reader questioned the impeachment process and if it met the standards required for removing a duly elected president, which it didn't.

[pacalo]

16. The Clinton witchhunt is when I stopped watching the "Today Show", which had been a

morning can't-miss of mine since when I was growing up in my parents' home.

After The Selection was appointed to the White House, I stopped getting the newspaper & turned to the internet.

[DonCoquixote]

24. the selection

might I ask who you mean?

[pacalo]

25. George Dubya Bush.

The selection of the corporate world by proxy (SCOTUS).

[Hulk]

17. My reaction exactly!!

I was so turned off by brian williams on the Jon Stewart show the other night. It was like he was trying to be "Mr. Funny", and Jon let the jack-ass go for it. I found him not the least bit funny, and why The Daily Show invites that hollow jacket on as a guest is beyond my comprehension.

williams seems to think it's all a "big joke". HE'S the big joke. He and all the other stuffed jackets that actually think they are doing "news". It's a travesty, what's happened to our "free press" today. There is nothing but "entertainment" and "propaganda" on the networks anymore. I'm not amused, and I don't swallow their bull shit.

[NeeDeep]

19. I now watch someone else - used to trust him

but a future retirement, a self image and a contract specifying his conduct has the better of him — no real investigation, only a whimpering need for access deciding everything. These people stand in as 'reporters' much like 'conservative politicians' stand in as public officials. They are doing whatever it takes to 'succeed' regardless of consequences or the public good. Yes we are all in trouble when the mongrel hoards are storming the walls, and they are us!

[just1voice]

20. Here's my open letter to the press whore

Dear Sir,

Fuck you, you lying whore, you're a disservice to the press and Americans overall. Your constant propaganda recitals only serve to misinform the public at large and your corrupted bank account. The 1%ers whom propaganda you spew are vile human beings who think topics such as torture are debatable and truth is something no longer relevant.

You are the one who is no longer relevant, go home, go away and never come back.

[DesertFlower]

21. K&R. nt

[tularetom]

27. Face!

Nails it better than anything I can recall reading.

Unfortunately it will have little or no impact because even if Williams reads it, he won't care. In his heart he knows every fucking word in that letter is true. He's no journalist, his entire persona is a sham, and he got where he is by kissing the ass of those in power.

But he's getting paid bazillions of dollars for keeping up the facade so why should he give a shit? If the whole world wised up tomorrow, he's set for life. He rationalized the fact that he's an utter fraud long ago and it no longer keeps him awake at night, if it ever did.

Brian Williams is a joke all right. Unfortunately the joke is on those of us who remember what journalism once was.

[alphafemale]

28. It's a COMEDY show.

sheeesh. He hits a good Liberal talking point every now and then. And he may beat you if you eat a pizza with a fork. But his raison d'etre is decidedly NOT politics.

[GeorgeGist]

29. I first noticed William's absence of journalistic credentials ...

during Katrina.