NBC staffers: Brian WILLIAMS axed "divisive" (anti-Administration) stories (by ISIKOFF, Lisa MYERS)
Last edited Sun Mar 8, 2015, 02:36 PM - Edit history (2)
Below, haha MYERS's swan song statement pointedly omits WILLIAMS as one of "the best of the best".
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/nbc-news-brian-williams-deborah-turness.html
[font size=5](Actually) True War Stories at NBC News[/FONT]
The trouble didn’t start with Brian Williams.
By Gabriel Sherman
.... The story of how things got this bad at NBC begins long before Brian Williams started getting his facts wrong (or at least long before he started getting called out for it). Steve Burke replaced Jeff Zucker as CEO of NBC Universal when Comcast took over the company in 2011. Although Burke was descended from television royalty—his father, Daniel Burke, had run Capital Cities, parent of ABC — he had no experience with news himself. So, a year after becoming CEO, he put all of NBC’s domestic news operations — NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC—under the command of Fili-Krushel, a former ABC television president and Time Warner executive, who, critics point out, also had no news experience. ....
...He also felt embraced by the entertainment community in a way he never was by NBC’s old guard, especially Russert and Tom Brokaw, his predecessor. Brokaw’s coldness seemed to heighten Williams’s sensitivities about being a blue-collar guy from New Jersey who had never finished college or been a war correspondent. Last summer, around the time Chuck Todd took over as moderator of Meet the Press, several staffers recalled that Williams told him: “At least your ghost (RUSSERT) is dead. Mine (BROKAW) is still walking the building.”
Comedy would have been a path out of Brokaw’s shadow. A few years ago, Williams told Burke he wanted to take over the Tonight Show from Jay Leno. Burke dismissed the idea and instead offered Williams a weekly prime-time program called Rock Center. Williams hoped it might develop into a variety show. But Rock Center ended up more like a softer 60 Minutes, and it was canceled after two middling seasons. Undeterred, Williams pitched CBS CEO Les Moonves about succeeding David Letterman, according to a high-level source, but Moonves wasn’t interested. (CBS declined to comment.) ....
The Nightly News crisis exposed deep-rooted anger among many NBC journalists, who felt frustrated that Williams had been allowed to gain so much power. In recent years, the anchor had churned through executive producers who challenged him.
Others complained about [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Williams’s unwillingness to go after hard-hitting stories.[/FONT] Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams[/FONT] over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones.[/FONT] He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Myers[/FONT] couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obamacare[/FONT]. Frustrated, Myers posted the article on NBC’s website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]“He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,”[/FONT] a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Myers wrote a series of scathing memos[/FONT] to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]documenting how Williams suppressed her stories.[/FONT] Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).
Since the scandal has proved to be something of a release valve for resentment that had been building toward Williams, it could make the climate at NBC News inhospitable to his possible return. “Very, very few people like him,” one senior journalist told me. “The phrase you hear constantly: ‘What goes around comes around.’?” ....
*This article appears in the March 9, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/lisa-myers-out-at-nbc-news-181771.html [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"] [/FONT]
[font size=5] Lisa Myers leaving NBC News[/font]
By DYLAN BYERS | 1/23/14
“I have had more than 30 fascinating years at NBC News, learning from and working [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]alongside the best of the best[/FONT], including journalists who paved the way for many of us: Tom [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Brokaw and Tim Russert,"[/FONT] Myers wrote in a statement. "I will greatly miss my many talented friends throughout the network, to whom I owe much, and who represent the best of journalism. I greatly appreciate the company granting my request to change gears and pursue new horizons.”
(from Wiki, ISIKOFF: ) On July 1, 2010, Isikoff became the national investigative correspondent for NBC News,[3] a position which he resigned in April, 2014, citing the network's move in a direction that left him with "fewer opportunities" for his work
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The scuttlebutt media buzz has been that LACK is pals with WILLIAMS and that LACK's return to NBC means he will find a way to rehabilitate WILLIAMS and put him back on the air.
This guest, who was presented at being intimate with the *inside* workings of everything, said that LACK would not make his decisions based on friendship ("barbecues"
but on cold cash business.
