Parker: Williams controversy stirs mixed feelings in fellow journalist

Then in 2006, while covering the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, Williams initially reported on MSNBC that he was flying at about 1,500 feet and could see two rockets launched from about six miles away. A month later, the story changed when he told Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart that rockets passed 1,500 feet below his helicopter. Then in 2007, he told an audience at Fairfield University that the rockets sailed just beneath him.

These are conflicting statements, to be sure, but are they malicious or intentionally misleading? Or, are they just stories that get better in the retelling, as humans tend to do. This is not to make excuses for Williams, but to put into perspective this particular chapter. He wasn’t officially reporting in subsequent renditions but was entertaining an audience with war stories. Is an anchor always an anchor, or does Brian Williams get to be just Brian on occasion?

Credibility, public trust

Less easily understood or justified is how one could recall being brought down by a grenade when one was not.

More embarrassing than contemptible, these stories can be seen as attempting to add a little sweat and grime rather than egoistic sheen to Williams’ squeaky-clean profile. It is hard to imagine why Williams would falsely report events from his perch in one of broadcast journalism’s most coveted jobs in exchange for slightly louder applause.

Pure ego? Extravagant insecurity? Loss of perspective that often accompanies wealth and celebrity? Were these retellings merely overembellished anecdotes or evidence of something more pathological in nature? Williams and his therapist will have to soldier through that one.

In the New Orleans incident, Williams reported that he saw a corpse floating down the street from his hotel window. But he was in the Ritz-Carlton on the edge of the French Quarter, where there was little to no flooding.

Unlike so many who are backstroking in schadenfreude, I’m torn between feeling sorry for Williams and wanting to see him step aside out of respect for what remains of journalistic principle.

However.

At the end of the newscast — or the story or column — what matters most in journalism is credibility and public trust, both of which have suffered in recent years. It isn’t only that news has become more slanted as partisanship displaces objectivity, but that high-profile individuals and institutions have squandered trust in pursuit of something other than truth.

Williams’ sin was reckless, but is it cause for ending a career?

Many wager that money will determine the answer — Williams makes a bunch for the network — but the bottom line depends entirely on one crucial question: Will people ever trust Williams again? At the very least, he deserves to find out.