NBC News and Populist Politics: Who Needs Glaciers or the Rule of Law?

Lost in all
of the hullabaloo over Jay Leno's final hours on the Tonight Show
was a rather telling interview on May 22 with NBC Nightly News anchor
and "journalist" Brian Williams (I put the word in quotation marks
because that's what Williams calls himself). NBC Nightly News, as NBC employee Leno pointed out,
is the highest-rated network television news program in the United States,
and has been so for almost a decade with average weekly audiences in
the region of 8 million viewers.

What made the
interview interesting was not the blatant cross-promotion on the part
of NBC, nor was it Williams'
name-dropping of sponsors
(such as Lipitor and Celebrex) during his wry set-piece on turning 50.
These tactics have become so commonplace that they barely garner attention.
What made the interview interesting is what it told us about Williams'
attitude regarding three of the most important contemporary issues facing
citizens in the United States (and globally): over-consumption, global
warming and detainees at
Guantanamo.

For a "journalist"
working for General Electric, Williams does quite well, pulling in an
estimated $10 million per year. It would take an experienced reporter
at the New York Times, at an average of $90,000 per year, 111 years
to make Williams' annual salary. Let's hope that NYT reporter is
taking Lipitor and Celebrex. One would think that Williams' staggering
income, combined with the fact that he is the anchor and managing editor
of the most-watched network news program in the United States, might
lead him to choose his words carefully on issues of national and global
importance.

Thankfully
for critics of the hyper-commercial US media system, however, Williams
decided (in front of 6 million viewers) that journalistic "objectivity"
wasn't really necessary when it came to discussing trifling issues
such as oil consumption and habeas corpus. On the former, Williams played
the populist card beautifully by suggesting that President Obama's
efforts on mileage standards
ignored the fact that, once you leave the big city (you know, places
like New York, Washington and San Francisco where out-of-touch Marxists
smoke weed and burn pictures of Lincoln while riding on "socialized"
public transportation), the rest of America is generally a "Ford F150" country. Exactly how many people
in the US actually need a truck the size of a Ford F150, on the
other hand, Williams failed to joke about. Williams also noted that
he was more interested in the noise made by the engine of his Mustang
than fuel efficiency, and proudly announced that he actually did not
want to know the gas mileage he is getting. Not surprising, I guess,
given the fact that he makes $1140 an hour.

Williams then
moved on to another hilarious topic: Guantanamo. When asked about the
"debate" between Cheney and Obama over the closure of the prison,
the nation's top journalist joked that the people in Guantanamo obviously
could not be sent to the Bel
Air hotel in Los
Angeles. Once again, exactly who had suggested that the detainees should
be coddled was not a topic for discussion. Williams made no mention,
of course, of the time-honored US belief that individuals are innocent
until proven guilty, regardless of how evil or criminal their cell-mates
might happen to be. But populist analysis was, once again, the order
of the day. With his Bel Air gag, Williams played into the notion that
all detainees at Guantanamo, by simple virtue of the fact that they
are there, must be guilty of something.

What all of
this boils down to is story-telling power, and Williams has that power
in droves. It might be acceptable for members of the general public
to make the kinds of comments made by Brian Williams on oil or Guantanamo,
but when the $10 million face of NBC news sits in front of an audience
of millions and jokes about caring more about how his engine sounds
than fuel efficiency while vast chunks of the polar ice-caps break off,
or offers a throw-away line on an issue fundamental to US law, he insults
not only the profession of journalism, but also the people he claims
to be working for (...the public, not GE). Williams would do well to
consider the fact that the same millions who watch him nightly, and
who watched him on Leno, were, research
shows, amazingly
ill-informed by his network and others in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Through his
weak and irresponsible populist banter, Williams has once again illustrated
both the depths to which journalism in the US has sunk and the reasons
why corporate and governmental propaganda retains such a firm foothold
in public discourse.