One of America's best-known TV news anchors Brian Williams has been suspended without pay for six months after he falsely claimed that he was in a helicopter that was hit by rocket fire in Iraq in 2003.
Pressure had been growing on Mr Williams (55), presenter of the most watched US evening news bulletin, NBC Nightly News, since he apologised last week and said he had “misremembered” the episode.
The anchor and managing editor of NBC’s flagship news bulletin had said on a number of occasions that he was on a US Chinook helicopter when it was hit by rocket-propelled grenades during the US invasion of Iraq.
He was in fact travelling on a helicopter flying behind the damaged aircraft that landed at the same destination about an hour later.
Mr Williams told the story accurately when he first reported the incident but in recent years his version changed, saying on a number of occasions that he was on the helicopter that hit by rocket fire.
After repeating the inaccurate account of the incident again on NBC Nightly News on January 30th, Mr Williams was called out by helicopter crew members who disputed his version. He admitted mixing up the sequence of events blaming “the fog of memory.”
“I would not have chosen to have made this mistake,” he told viewers last week. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
His admission led to calls for his resignation and ridicule on social media where his credibility and NBC’s integrity were questioned.
NBC News president Deborah Turness told staff in a memo, which emerged last night, that Mr Williams had "misrepresented" events while he was reporting on the Iraq war in 2003.
“It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling the story in other venues,” she said.
“This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.”
She said that his six-month suspension was “the appropriate and proportionate action.”
Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBC Universal, said that the actions of the veteran news anchor were "inexcusable" and that the suspension was "severe and appropriate."
The network is carrying out a review of Mr Williams who took himself off air last week “for several days” after it had become “painfully apparent” that he had become “too much a part of the news.”
His evening news programme has averaged almost nine million viewers this year compared with eight million for ABC and almost 7 million for CBS.
Mr Williams extended his contract with NBC in December, reportedly earning up to $10 million a year for five years. At the time Ms Turness called him one of the “most trusted journalists of our time.”
Mr Burke told NBC staff last night that Mr Williams’s actions had “jeopardised the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News” but that he “deserves a second chance.”
“Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone’s trust,” he said.
