Truth-stretcher stretches his way out of a job

Six months after the suicide of Robin Williams, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was suspended for six months without pay for exaggerating his role in a helicopter incident in Iraq, marking the first time a network news anchor has been stripped of his duties. The disciplinary action was a stunning fall from grace for Williams, who presided over America's top-rated newscast for a decade and helped lead it to numerous Emmy and Peabody awards. The punishment follows last week's on-air apology for falsely saying that a helicopter in which he was flying on a combat mission in 2003 had come under fire. The apology touched off a firestorm and was widely perceived as insufficient by a chorus of media critics and war veterans. NBC launched an internal investigation as Williams took a temporary leave of absence. By then, though, the damage to the anchor's credibility proved too extensive to keep his job. It serves him right for making up stuff and passing it off as news. You only do that crap with news satire. If your job is to report on the real news, then you do that instead of making stuff up. If your helicopter wasn't shot down, don't say it was otherwise your job could also be on the line.