You know this whole thing with Brian Williams really irks me on several levels. As a journalist it gives all of us a black eye. I’ve been in the civilian and/or military part of being a reporter/journalist most of my adult life and never have I felt the need to embellish or create from whole cloth anything I’ve seen, done or reported on. But then I’ve never felt the need to make myself part of the event. Like Rush said once…reporters report the news journalists put themselves in the middle of it. These days we have too many of the latter and not enough of the former.
Unlike Mr. Williams I actually have a certificate showing I met the qualifications and requirements to perform the job of a radio and tv broadcaster, perhaps if he’d stayed in college and not dropped out to go work for Jimmy Carter he would have taken the course on Ethics in Journalism and learned that integrity is everything. Whether I’m reporting a story or doing my job as an NCO leading and training soldiers, integrity is everything. You lose that and nothing else matters.
The defense of what he’s done by the likes of Bill Moyers, Geraldo and Joe Klein is equally disgusting. Goes to show they’ve learned nothing after Dan Rather and “fake but accurate”.
Ethics??? Whut dem??? Ethics has been long dead pretty much everywhere, but especially in colleges and universities...subsumed by leftist "political correctness". Not just in journalism, but in ALL fields that purport to be "professional".....science, business, law, and all the rest.
Todays ethics are "situational" (i.e. if it (insert any ethically sensitive behavior here) supports the current leftist memes, it is "ethical"....if not, it isn't.