This much I know: Brian Williams will never rival Walter Cronkite as "the most trusted man in America."
This much I know: Brian Williams will never rival Walter Cronkite as “the most trusted man in America.”

Brian Williams earns his way back

Television’s most elegant and articulate anchor, who shepherds what is arguably the nation’s most informative nightly news program, continues to toil in relative obscurity.

It’s not that viewership for Brian Williams’s 11 p.m. ET program on MSNBC is tiny; it reaches nearly two million people on an average night. It’s that the broadcast from which Williams was exiled four years ago, “NBC Nightly News,” attracts a dinner-hour audience that is roughly four times as large.

Williams was prone to exaggerating stories in which he was personally involved, most notably one involving a mission in Iraq in which he claimed his helicopter was hit by enemy fire. As a result, he became one of the few national TV anchors to be disciplined for what in today’s lexicon might be called “fake news.”

He apologized on air, saying, “I let down my NBC colleagues and our viewers and I’m determined to earn back their trust.”

The network suspended Williams for six months and then eased him into the role he now occupies at MSNBC, hosting “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” five nights a week. Depending on how you look at it, he is either the luckiest man in media, having been given a second chance to do what he loves most, or the saddest, knowing that he is one of TV’s best players, stuck in its minor leagues.

As a broadcaster and journalist, I was repulsed by what Brian Williams did, both to himself and to his profession. I was skeptical when NBC gave him a new perch, recalling how acclaimed anchor Dan Rather received no such opportunity at CBS News after he took part in controversial reporting in 2004 about President George W. Bush’s military record. The best Rather could do to salvage his career was to sign on with a lower-tier cable channel called AXS.

And now, in an age of presidential exaggerations and outright lies, at a time when cable commentators regularly blur the line between fact an opinion, in an era when the public’s trust in news media polls at alarmingly low levels, why should viewers put their faith in Brian Williams? Because he remains the best at what he does, and because he does it at a time when the nation needs it most.

“The 11th Hour” succeeds in two areas where most other news programs, on both cable and broadcast, fall short.

The first is managing to summarize the day’s important news without burdening viewers, especially late at night, with material that they feel they have already absorbed via instant digital feeds. The three legacy evening news broadcasts on NBC, CBS, and ABC fail here. While retaining a sizeable combined audience of over 20 million people, they are relics of an era when news flowed at a slower pace.

The second is providing analysis without overt commentary. Cable’s major news players — CNN, Fox, and MSNBC — have increasingly pushed their prime-time hosts into the roles of commentators. CNN’s capable host Don Lemon is an example of this unfortunate Peter Principle, which has Lemon diverting from his real skill as a reporter and moderator to deliver a nightly opinion piece, which is hardly his strength.

Brian Williams gets right to the news and then turns to a stable of panelists who are not usually pundits but rather top-line print reporters from major papers and news services who have just filed their stories for the next morning. These practitioners deliver analysis without a specific political orientation. Williams himself acts as inquisitor without injecting too much opinion.

Watching at 8 p.m. in California, knowing that many of my East Coast friends and colleagues have retired for the night, I wonder if “The 11th Hour” should perhaps be shifted to “The 8th Hour” as a centerpiece of MSNBC’s prime-time schedule. Then again, the program might be successful, in part, because of its timeslot — as was Ted Koppel’s beautifully crafted “Nightline” on ABC, back when Koppel helped invent it in 1980.

This much I know: Brian Williams will never rival Walter Cronkite as “the most trusted man in America.” Yet, he has managed to reinvent himself to give us what might be the most trustworthy news program on television.

The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.

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Peter Funt
In print and on television, Peter Funt continues the Funt Family tradition of making people smile – while examining the human condition. After 15 years hosting the landmark TV series “Candid Camera,” Peter writes frequent op-eds for The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal as well as his weekly column distributed by the Cagle Cartoon Syndicate. His writing contains the same pointed social observations that have made “Candid Camera” so popular since its invention by Peter’s dad, Allen, back in 1947. His new book, "Cautiously Optimistic," takes America's temperature in six-dozen essays, guaranteed to make readers think and smile. It's available at Amazon.com and through CandidCamera.com. Peter is a frequent speaker before business groups and on college campuses, using the vast “Candid Camera” library to bring his points to life. His newest presentation for corporate audiences, “The Candid You,” draws upon decades of people-watching to identify factors that promote better communication and productivity. Details about Peter Funt’s speaking engagements are available at: www.CandidCamera.com. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naYXOGIktsw for video. Peter hosted the newest versions of “Candid Camera” in recent years with Suzanne Somers and Dina Eastwood, with complete collections now available on DVD. Peter Funt actually made his first appearance on “Candid Camera” when he and the legendary series were each just three years old. Peter posed as a shoeshine boy who charged $10 per shoe! Since that time he has appeared in hundreds of “Candid Camera” sequences, hosted over 200 network episodes. In addition to his hidden-camera work, Peter Funt has produced and hosted TV specials on the Arts & Entertainment and Lifetime cable networks. He also spent five years as an editor and reporter with ABC News in New York. Earlier in his career, Peter wrote dozens of articles for The New York Times and TV Guide about television and film. He was editor and publisher of the television magazine On Cable. And he authored the book "Gotcha!" for Grosset & Dunlap on the lost art of practical joking. Peter’s essay on the evolution of television is included in “The Story of American Business,” published in 2009 by Harvard Business Press. Peter also follows in his father's footsteps as President of Laughter Therapy Foundation, a non-profit organization started by Allen Funt in 1982. Drawing from the Candid Camera library, Laughter Therapy sends special videos, at no charge, to critically ill people throughout the U.S. When Peter took over as host of the CBS specials, "Variety" wrote: "The latest new 'Candid Camera' specials seem to be getting funnier. Peter Funt is as personable as his dad..." Following Candid Camera's Battle of the Sexes special, "The Hollywood Reporter" observed: "This show is great fun. Peter Funt has a remarkably effective presence." Peter Funt received his degree in journalism from the University of Denver. In 2010 he returned to the Denver campus to be honored as a Master Scholar in Arts and Humanities. He is a past winner of the annual Silurian's Award for radio news reporting, for his ABC News coverage of racial disturbances in Asbury Park, NJ. Peter is founder of the Monterey County Young Journalists program in California, which provides hands-on training for high school students pursuing careers in news. He also inaugurated the Courtroom Journalism competition in Monterey County in conjunction with the Lyceum Organization, and conducts a similar statewide event for the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles, as part of its Mock Trial program. Peter resides in Central California with his wife, Amy, and two children, Stephanie and Danny. His favorite pastimes are golf, baseball, tennis and people-watching.

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