Ok, so the whereabouts of Tom Brokaw, whom I do not care about (and presumably, you do not either), are important to FR because it is a proxy for an entirely different argument that no one can bother to make.
I’m not sure what that ‘entirely different argument’ might be, but it seems to me that it is that celebrities, and Brokaw is a celebrity, known for being known, have some kind of obligation to the public at large, and especially to the keyboard warriors, and to appear and speak up where and when they are expected by those warriors.