Let Brian Williams Go Back To Work

Personally, if Brian Williams died tomorrow I wouldn't even shrug my shoulders. Be careful how you read that. I didn't say I want him dead. The point I'm making is this.. I know the man's name in passing and nothing more. I don't care about what he does for a living or who he is as a person. For all I know, he's already dead.

This is an opinion blog and not the news, so I don't have any moral compass to stand by. We just tell you what we think and you read it or don't. We don't serve a specific side of the ethical or political fence. I just take a topic I want to write about and say whatever I feel with no repercussions. Brian Williams doesn't live in that world and he's recently made headlines for basically embellishing on a story that happened to him during the war. If you haven't heard about it, this video will explain.

I used the word embellish because he didn't flat out lie. He was involved in an attack, but he told everybody that his helicopter was hit by a rocket when in fact the helicopter he was following got hit instead. Maybe he misremembered it, like he claims, or maybe he just wanted to be the cool guy at the party and tell the story in the way that made him seem better to his audience. A colossal fuck up nonetheless.

I think we, as Americans, should hold our news anchors to the highest moral standards. If they lie, they should be fired without severance. If they tell inaccurate details, whether honest or accidental, they should have heavy consequences for those actions. They are being paid a lot of money to give us factual news that is held to a certain ethical platform and I believe we deserve it in return. However, that isn't the world we live in.

The one we live in has Fox News correspondents apologizing regularly or fumbling through news stories in whatever way fits their political agenda. While that video was politically one-sided, it was also very factual. I get it, Fox is the joke of the news world. They do whatever they want and we just shake our heads at it and move on with our day. Just like anything that comes out of Florida.

If Brian Williams is going to be the first reporter held to the highest standards of the internet when it comes to his honest news reporting, I'm absolutely fine with NBC pulling out its bull whip, the internet getting its pitch forks, and us all setting a very clear example of Brian Williams. If this is what we're gonna do from here on in, I'm all for it. This isn't that though.. you and I know it. This is just the hype train the internet is hot on for the week, and while Brian Williams is suspended for the next six months in his home, watching other reporters on Fox make up shit every week at their leisure, the internet will be moving on to whatever new activities are going on in the Kardashian household. We'll forget that we all cared about Brian Williams and we'll hold no other news reporters to the same standard we set for him in this case.

Remember Joseph Kony? Surely you remember the social media star born of being a Ugandan rebel leader who had a surge of popularity on the internet due to how he treated children? Did we save those children? Nah. Did we catch Joseph Kony? Absolutely not. So he just got his fifteen minutes of fame and we moved on just like we'll do here. Put Brian Williams back to work and be realistic. Americas standards aren't changing, because we only care about what social media tells us to care about for the moment it's relevant on our feed.