NBC's Brian Williams Off the Air for 'Next Several Days'

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS' Brian WIlliams will be away from the anchor desk for the next several days, he announced today, according to The New York Daily News.

"In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions," Williams said. "As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue.

Earlier this week, Williams apologized on air for his "bungled" story he recounted on a 2013 LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN appearance, regarding an incident in which he claimed to have been shot down in Iraq years earlier while covering the war.

Williams shared with viewers, "I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago ... I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft."

Describing the incident during the 'Letterman' appearance, Williams said, "We were in some helicopters. What we didn't know was we were north of the invasion. We were the northernmost Americans in Iraq. We were going to drop some bridge portions across the Euphrates so the 3rd Infantry could cross on them. Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in. RPG and AK-47."

Williams is seen by more U.S. television viewers on a daily basis than any other individual. Since taking over as anchor and managing editor of NBC NIGHTLY NEWS in 2004, he has strengthened the broadcast's position as the most-watched newscast in all of television and has become the most highly decorated evening news anchor of the modern era. He has received eleven Edward R. Murrow Awards, twelve Emmy Awards, the duPont-Columbia University Award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism and the industry's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award.

Williams began his broadcasting career in 1981 at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kan. He worked at several local stations in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City before joining NBC News in 1993. He became NBC's chief White House correspondent and then anchor and managing editor of The News With Brian Williams on MSNBC and CNBC.

In 2004, he took over as anchor of NBC Nightly News, the nation's top-rated nightly news program, a distinction it has maintained throughout Williams' tenure in the anchor chair. Two years later, Time named him one of THE 100 most influential people in the world.

In 2011, NBC News launched Rock Center with Brian Williams, the network's first new primetime newsmagazine in nearly two decades.

To post a comment, you must register and login.