Media Credibility LOL

An, poor Brian Williams.  Sent to Coventry without six months worth of nice salary, the chorus of "Boo, Boo! Booooo!" ringing in his ears, some of which are coming from his colleagues who've been waiting for his take down  for some time.  To them, he wasn't NBC's hyped-up "Most Trusted Newscaster in Television,"  he was an ego-puff in an expensive suit, That Guy who never lost an opportunity to remind everyone in the room of his Wonderfulness.  And for guys like that, it's just a matter of time.

Add in the fact that Williams is a very sharp, funny man and a terrific raconteur, and it was all just inevitable. The seduction of being a celebrity, of being the talk-show guest that everybody who's anybody is clamoring for is a temptation few can resist.  Add in the utterly unreliability of memory, the lure of embellishment when telling entertaining tales, and you have the  recipe for disaster:  Ego, spotlight, fungible memory, the unalterable demands of fiction.  It's the banana peel on the top of the stairs time.

Well, no harm, no foul.  The fake hero is disgraced and gets to eat humble pie, his fellow journalists get to preen in their (as yet) unsullied ethical mantles, NBC gets a lot of publicity, the public gets confirmation for their belief in the fakery and unreliability of all news organizations, cynically tossing babies and bathwater alike out the window (thereby making running the long con on them even easier), and stand-up comedians have a field day. 

And instead of using Williams as a wake-up call and demanding (and getting) better news, the public flips the channel and settles for stories of lost kittens and 24/7 coverage of sex-drenched murder trials.  Everything back to normal in Alzheimer Nation.