Williams: News Is Worth Paying For

‘Nightly News' anchor says news orgs need to invest in reporting

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/5/2010 9:59:38 AM

NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams told a room full of journalists Thursday (March 4) that news organizations need to invest in the kind of real reporting that separates facts from information, and the public should be willing to pay for it.

Williams was in Washington to receive the Len Zeidenberg First Amendment award from the Radio Television Digital News Foundation.

He used as an example of the importance of separating the difference between two stories that he said greeted him as he got off the train in Washington and prepared to do the news from NBC's bureau there. One story, presented as an online fact, was that Chief Justice John Roberts was resigning. NBC checked it out and he wasn't. The Website had to change its story, but not, ironically, before a law professor conducting a Georgetown  seminar about unsourced reporting reported that the chief justice was going to resign. Within minutes it had been Tweeted to the wider world, he said. The other story was about a shooting at a Pentagon metro station that proved to be true.

Both were information, he said, but only one of them was news that actually happened. "Information is easy," he said. "Facts are very tough. They're best when they are right. And we've got to be right every day and every night."

Williams suggested that that journalism's economic model should stem from that adherence to the truth. "Facts should be worth paying for.

Williams said that not only are a lot of people angry at the media, but a lot of people want to be the media. He said that was fine, but distinguished it from the professional journalists in the room, which included CBS Radio reporter Cami McCormick, injured in Afghanistan last year. "A lot of us in this room have been willing to give our lives for the First Amendment we celebrate."