Coverage: Brian Williams stepping back from Nightly News

After revealing that he’s been untruthful about getting shot down in a helicopter in Iraq, revered news anchor Brian Williams is taking a break from the anchor’s chair. It’s a blow to the business of journalism.

David Carr wrote for The New York Times that Williams was the one who brought the story back up:

“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an R.P.G.,” Mr. Williams said, introducing the segment, referring to a rocket-propelled grenade. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”

But Stars and Stripes, the military publication, was tipped off that a thread popped up on NBC’s Facebook page about the segment from soldiers who were there that day in 2003, saying Mr. Williams was describing something that happened to another helicopter, not his, and that he arrived later.

Confronted with this, Mr. Williams acknowledged his mistake on his newscast last Wednesday, and offered up a muddled apology, saying he had conflated events in his memory. And then in a statement over the weekend, he said, “In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions.” He added: “As managing editor of ‘NBC Nightly News,’ I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days.”

The perceptions of the weak, confused apology, and suspending himself for as long as he chooses, are not good for Mr. Williams or his employer. A full-throated, unmodulated apology is the only thing that will satisfy a public who placed their trust in him. And his voluntary step back, however well intended, suggests he is answerable only to himself. Indeed, the investigation at NBC will be led internally, by the head of investigations, who depends on Mr. Williams to make room for his work on the newscast.

The Los Angeles Times story by Stephen Battaglio that NBC had opened an internal investigation:

Brian Williams’ false statements regarding his experience on a military helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq have triggered an investigation amid escalating criticism of the anchorman’s actions.

NBC News launched the inquiry of the news anchor’s accounts of his travels in Iraq, which have come under attack from Iraq war veterans and are spurring a growing chorus from media critics who say his journalistic credibility has been seriously undermined.

Williams has said in recent years that he was in a Chinook helicopter that was brought down by grenade and small arms fire, even though his original 2003 reporting said it was another helicopter in the convoy that was hit.

NBC News President Deborah Turness said an internal investigation is underway.

The helicopter pilot disputed Williams’s facts on TV on Sunday, according to a USA Today story by Mike Snider:

Don Helus told CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday that the helicopter he piloted in 2003 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Williams was not on the flight, he said.

When Helus returned to Kuwait for repairs on his chopper, he saw an MSNBC video interview with Williams in which the newsman said the chopper he had been in had been hit by a RPG.

Helus told Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter that he contacted MSNBC, which then was NBC’s main Web presence, “just to alert them that the facts were incorrect,” Helus said. “Mr. Williams was not part of our flights. He was in a different flight.”

Helus said he never heard back from MSNBC or NBC.

And it gets worse. Yahoo News reported in a story by Dylan Stableford that other stories are coming into question:

The U.S. Army commander of the joint task force during Hurricane Katrina says Brian Williams’ story about seeing a dead body float by his New Orleans hotel room during the 2005 storm is “suspect.”

Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday that the flooding around Williams’ hotel — the Ritz-Carlton — at the time the NBC News anchor said he saw the body float by would likely not have been high enough, as there was relatively little flooding in the French Quarter, the area where Williams was staying.

“It would be very suspect,” Honoré said. “But anything’s possible.”

Honoré said while it was possible Williams saw a dead body float by, it was unlikely because the water was “well below knee level around the Ritz-Carlton.”

The retired general also said if Williams did see a dead body, he should’ve reported it to authorities or tried to help the victim.

“If he was a newsman and saw a body floating by his hotel, why didn’t he go grab it? Why didn’t he get somebody and report it?” Honoré wondered. “Either report it — which you’re supposed to do — or as a human being go out and try to assist that person or get somebody.”

Williams also said his hotel was “overrun with gangs,” an assertion Honoré said was never corroborated.

As Carr said, stories change over time, and Williams was adapting to the public’s need for anchors to be part of the action. But it’s no excuse. Reporting should be accurate, and it seems that NBC was aware that some of the statements it allowed to be publicized were false. Interesting, no one is calling for Williams to leave his job permanently, which happened to several other high-profile journalists who falsified information.