“It only hurts when I smirk.”Photo by: David Shankbone
Sucks to be him, but this disaster affords NBC News the perfect opportunity to change its ways for the good, forever, thus to restore its reputation and – who knows? – maybe even make a buck or two.
Bitter recriminations are yesterday’s news. Here’s what NBC should do right now to put its news division on a much better course:
1. Fire current division president Deborah Turness. MSNBC is the anchor, but the whole division is a sycophantic politician’s-butt-bussing sinking ship.
2. Scuttle and start over by hiring Roger Ailes’ hungriest protege.
3. As his first act, the new president of the news division will fire Brian Williams.
After that, his job is stealing the Fox News daytime audience, the just-the-facts folks who turned to Fox after NBC/ABC/CBS/PBS turned them off too many times. Serve that audience at all hours and no other: Verifiable facts about matters of true importance delivered impartially, with opinion identified as such an presented in a reasonable balance.
It sucks to be Brian Williams, and it sucks to be NBC News. But the news division can be fixed, in time coming to be better than it has ever been, better than any television news operation so far.
All the way broken is a lot to fix, but at least you can’t kid yourself about wishes and prayers. NBC can redeem itself completely. I’ve got the unders on that happening, but the opportunity is there.
