"‘Did something happen to [my] head?"

"Brian Williams’s fabrication was just the latest, and worst, of the debacles that have plagued NBC News since NBCUniversal was bought by Comcast in 2011." Excerpt...

Turness learned the startling news: the most important person at the network, the face of NBC News, its anchorman Brian Williams, had apparently been exaggerating an anecdote about coming under fire in a U.S. Army helicopter during the Iraq war in 2003. A reporter from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes had called about it that morning. Williams was supposed to talk to him off the record in an effort to determine what the reporter planned to write. Instead, to the dismay of NBC’s P.R. staff, Williams had gone on the record and admitted he hadn’t been telling the truth, not only on a Nightly News broadcast the previous week but also over the years at public appearances and on talk shows.

Stunned, Turness was still trying to grasp the gravity of the situation when the Stars and Stripes story went online. At that point her biggest concern was the apology Williams was preparing to read to viewers on his broadcast that evening. He was already taping segments as he and Turness began swapping e-mails on its all-important wording. Turness and the other executives who had gotten involved quickly became frustrated, as they would remain for days, with Williams’s inability to explain himself. “He couldn’t say the words ‘I lied,’ ” recalls one NBC insider. “We could not force his mouth to form the words ‘I lied.’ He couldn’t explain what had happened. [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.” (read more)

NYT: Michael Isikoff Leaves NBC News

“It’s a totally amicable departure,” he said. “I had a good ride at NBC, and I’m proud of a lot of what I was able to do there. But it was increasingly clear they were moving in directions in which there were going to be fewer opportunities for my work.”

Michael Isikoff was the first journalist to find out about then president Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski. Newsweek, the shop Isikoff worked for at the time, spiked it, they pulled the story.
Matt Drudge wound up with the scoop and the rest is, as they say, history.
I believe that incident, that open defiance of the code to first inform the American public, despite of who is in power, spelled the beginning of the end for the Main Stream Media monopoly on what is considered newsworthy. Their bias was revealed for everyone to see.
People now can choose where to get their information. #BundyRanch is but the latest example.

"NBC News Notes Evidence That Lesbian Waitress Faked Story About Being Refused a Tip"

"With an ever-changing 24/7-news cycle, it’s refreshing to see some members of the liberal media taking the time to correct the record. While we at NewsBusters don’t usually give the liberals at NBC News much credit, for once they did a respectable job and did not completely fall for what now appears to be a complete scam by a New Jersey waitress."

You may recall last week that the media were all abuzz about a New Jersey waitress who claimed a religious family refused to tip her, writing on the receipt that they disapproved of her lifestyle. Well now New York City's NBC News 4 is reporting that a man has come forward with his copy of the receipt and a credit card statement to prove that he did, in fact, tip the waitress. What's more, this man denies he wrote the statement on her copy of the check, which says he disapproved of her lifestyle.

To his credit, MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts relayed the story on his November 26 program. Roberts, who is openly gay, has long made his hour of daytime programming a platform for gay rights-related stories. He deserves credit for spotlighting the newest development in this story rather than leave his audience to go by the one-sided reporting they might have heard earlier in the week on MSNBC's Weekends with Alex Witt.

NewsBusters (Update Link "Will Leaving a Cash Tip Open Us Up to This Kind of Fraud?"