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Brian Williams, the face of the NBC News division and among its most visible personalities for the past decade, has been suspended from his post at??Nightly News for six months without pay.?? Lester Holt, who has been filling in for Williams since Feb. 9, will continue as interim anchor of Nightly News. "We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately," NBC News president Deborah Turness said in a memo, adding that "this was a very hard decision. Certainly...

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has been suspended for six months without pay following his false claims about an experience he had during the Iraq war, NBC News president Deborah Turness announced Tuesday night. "We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately," Turness wrote in a memo to staff. "We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News."

NBC should fire Brian Williams. It’s not just because the face of its news division has become the trending punch line on social media after his harrowing account of a near-death experience in Iraq was exposed as false. It’s not just because his explanation for the discrepancies in fact were simply absurd, or because his apology was more parsed than abject. It’s because he fabricated a story. This is one line in journalism that must never be crossed, should never be rationalized and can never be mitigated by any sum of years of honorable service in the profession. * Williams...

The waters have been choppy for NBC News in recent years, with its “Today” franchise having ceded ground to ABC’s “Good Morning America” and its Sunday-morning mainstay “Meet the Press” struggling to find a new identity after the death of longtime host Tim Russert. Amidst that chaos, Brian Williams was supposed to be the anchor – in both senses of the word. Now Williams, whose “NBC Nightly News” is the most watched evening newscast in the United States, has added to the challenges facing the NBCUniversal news division. [Snip] What makes Williams’ admission worse, according to one person familiar with...

On Tuesday night, the three major broadcast networks omitted from their coverage on the Islamic group ISIS a report that President Barack Obama has received briefings on the terrorist organization “for at least a year before the group seized large swaths of territory over the summer.” ABC, CBS, and NBC all led their evening newscasts with multiple segments on the gruesome murder of American journalist Stephen Sotloff at the hands of ISIS in a propaganda video released on Tuesday afternoon. Over on the Fox News Channel (FNC), Special Report with Bret Baier aired three segments on the story, including a...

Was this an actual interview, or a slightly-doctored version of that SNL skit in which a solicitous panelist asked candidate Obama if he was comfortable and might need another pillow? Here’s what Brian Williams, whose interview of Pres. Obama aired on this evening’s Nightly News, managed to pull off in less than 80 seconds, the president’s answers included: * Instead of asking the president how his picks were at odds with his proclaimed values, or how much personal blame he accepts for the failed process, Williams empathized: “you lost two nominees, two appointments today. Did that make you angry, I...

How could job loss for 80 small-town residents be a "great story?"

NBC anchor Brian Williams deserves kudos for, on one night at least, giving as high a priority to declining gas prices as he and the media gave when they were rising, but then he suggested a political motive. Williams led Wednesday's NBC Nightly News by acknowledging the plunging prices and his own newscast's inaccurate predictions: “If you have filled your tank lately, then you've noticed. After some dire predictions on this broadcast and elsewhere that prices were rocketing to $4 a gallon, gas prices are coming down” to an average of $2.50 per gallon. Reporter Anne Thompson attributed the fall...

by Mark Finkelstein August 10, 2006 - 22:01 Hat tip to poster 'nutmeg' at Free Republic. Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News might have meant to praise the heroism and selflessness of our various service people. But he employed what was at best an incredibly awkward, at worst an inappropriate, offensive and simply wrong manner of doing it. On this evening's 7 PM ET edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews mused about the UK-born terrorists whose plot was foiled today: "Here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years...

by Mark Finkelstein July 18, 2006 - 09:37 I don't know about you, but whenever I have to choose whose military strategy to rely on - the Israeli IDF's or a member of the MSM - I'm going to go with the American media guy every time - particularly when the fellow in question is NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams. After all, what battles or wars has Israel ever won? In contrast, those fraternity parties back at Catholic University were an absolute minefield, not to mention the internecine battle scars Brian earned while working in Jimmy Carter's White House....

Durbinization alert: Tons of readers are e-mailing me about NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments tonight in which he apparently compared the Founding Fathers to modern-day terrorists. The remarks seem to pooh-pooh the story about Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's alleged involvement in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Williams previewed his argument on his MSNBC blog: Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House...

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[Courtesy NBC Nightly News. Used WITH permission.] BROKAW/BUSH TRANSCRIPT-NBC NIGHTLY NEWSPublished: April 24, 2003 Transcript of Brokaw's exclusive interview with President George W. Bush from tonight's edition of "NBC Nightly News." If used, please courtesy "NBC Nightly News." A frame grab of Brokaw/Bush can be obtained at www.nbcmv.com. 6:30 PM FIRST FEED OF NIGHTLY NEWS IS BELOW, SECOND 7:00 PM FEED IS ALSO BELOW WITH UPDATED ELEMENTS: BROKAW INTRO: The news about Tariq Aziz came as the President was returning from a day of campaigning for his tax cuts in Ohio - a trip I joined him on for his...