Letters to the Editor

Brian Williams nominates Peggy Noonan for a Pulitzer Prize The WSJ column hailed by the NBC anchor as "a splendid piece of journalism" has to be read to be believed. Glenn Greenwald [2008-04-29]

• December 26, 2004 - - "I’m one of the few in a very select group that Rush has allowed on when I’ve called in from the car. . . . I've been listening for years. I think it’s my duty to listen to Rush."

  http://qanda.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1002

  December 26, 2004
  Brian Williams
  NBC Nightly News, Anchor

  Info: Brian Williams discusses his passion for history, books and his career path to the anchor chair. Williams took over as anchor for NBC Nightly News on Dec. 2nd, 2004. He’s been with NBC News since 1993. The interview took place in his office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

  LAMB: What is a normal day like for you and what I’m looking for is the information flow.

  WILLIAMS: Well, a normal day, given that that’s a little bit of an oxymoron and that some of that has to do with raising two children and having school functions and having a lot else in my life, the normal day begins with the tactile feel of a newspaper. Three of them come to the house, "USA Today," the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times" and I will get on the web. I will -- I get a news summary on my blackberry. That’s buzzing as I wake up in the morning. [...]

  [...] And you know, during the day, we just read a ton. I take home so many periodicals. I read the "Standard." I read the – I read "Time" and "Newsweek." I read "Claremount (ph) Review of Books." I read the "New York Times," the New York review of books, all kinds of periodicals.

  LAMB: "Weekly Standard" when you were talking about.

  WILLIAMS: Sure, yeah.

  LAMB: I mean, how do you – so much the conservative media criticize anchors living in New York City and in Connecticut for being isolated and never paying attention to their thought. How do you – do you ever listen to the Limbaugh show or any of that stuff?

  WILLIAMS: Oh, often, often, and I’m one of the few in a very select group that Rush has allowed on when I’ve called in from the car. I do listen to Rush. I listen to it from a radio in my office or depending on my day, if I’m in the car, I will listen to Rush and he will tell you I’ve been listening for years. I think it’s my duty to listen to Rush. I think Rush has actually yet to get the credit he is due because his audience for so many years felt they were in the wilderness of this country. No one was talking to them. They would look at mainstream media and they’d hear sentences like the following: Conservative firebrand Newt Gingrich today accused Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy….

  Well, what’s wrong with that sentence? My friend Brit Hume – we covered the White House together, always would call reporters on this. Where’s the appellation for Ted Kennedy in that sentence, you remembers of the perhaps unintentionally liberal media? Why aren’t you calling Kennedy something if you’re going to label Newt Gingrich a conservative firebrand? That’s what Rush did. Rush said to millions of Americans, you have a home. Come with me. For three hours a day you can listen and hear the like minded calling in from across the country and I’ll read to you things perhaps you didn’t see that are out there. I think Rush gave birth to the FOX news channel. I think Rush helped to give birth to a movement. I think he played his part in the contract with America. So I hope he gets his due as a broadcaster.

  That is an answer that is meant to be absent ideology. But if you’re anchoring a blue state broadcast that is headquartered in a blue state, it’s incumbent on you to know as much as you can. I like to feel I grew up in a red spot in a blue state. Elmira, New York, the Elmira of my youth, was classic small town America. My wife and I vacation in Yellowstone National Park every year out in the west. I feel I know that area intimately. I go down to the house where I was born, where my sister now lives in New Jersey. I visit my old fire house.

  I feel I have a good, almost again to use the word tactile feel for America.

  - - Brian Williams, interviewed by Brian Lamb, 12/26/04

  -- sysprog
  [Read sysprog's other letters]
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