Brian Williams apologizes, blames his ego for telling false tales

Brian Williams, in his first public comments since losing his NBC Nightly News anchor chair in a major demotion, apologized for telling inaccurate stories about his experiences and said such misstatements were "clearly ego driven."

"I am sorry," a subdued Williams told Today's Matt Lauer in interviews carried out over two days this week. "I am sorry for what happened. I am different as a result and I expect to be held to a different standard."

Excerpts were broadcast Friday morning on Today.

After a six-month internal investigation, NBC announced Thursday that the veteran newsman would not be reinstated as the anchor of the Nightly News and, instead, would be slotted for anchoring breaking news and special reports on NBC's sister cable network MSNBC, a huge comedown for a highly paid star.

The network slapped down Williams for exaggerating his experiences initially in covering the Iraq War in 2003. That, in turn, led NBC to examine past statements by him and to conclude that he had stretched the truth on numerous occasions, particularly in appearances on entertainment shows.

He was suspended for six months while the network carried out the investigation.

The network said in a statement that its "extensive review found that Williams made a number of inaccurate statements about his own role and experiences covering events in the field. The statements in question did not, for the most part, occur on NBC News platforms or in the immediate aftermath of the news events, but rather on late-night programs and during public appearances, usually years after the news events in question."

NBC named longtime newsman Lester Holt, who has been filling in for Williams for a half year, as the permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News.

Williams said the six-month ordeal, in which he had been held up to public scrutiny and ridicule, had been "torture" for him and his family, but necessary.

"I was reading these newspaper stories, not liking the person I was reading about, wanting — I would have given anything to get to the end of the story and have it be about someone else, but it was about me," he said. "These statements I made, I own this; I own up to this and I have to go through and see and try to figure out how it happened."

Williams said he had tried to determine in his own mind why he occasionally embellished stories of his work in the field.

"Looking back, it had to have been ego that made me think I had to be sharper, funnier, quicker than anybody else, put myself closer to the action, having been at the action at the beginning," Williams said.

He said that he believes he treated words very carefully in his role as newsman, but acted differently in appearances on other programs, like talks shows.

"After work, when I got out of the building, got out of that (news) realm, I used a double standard," he said. "Something changed, something was sloppier. I said that things that weren't true. Looking back, that is plain."

At one point in the interview, Lauer said viewers might conclude from Williams' remarks that he was avoiding stating that he deliberately intended to mislead people.

"I see why people would say that. I understand that," he said. "This came from a bad place, a bad urge inside me. This was clearly ego driven, a desire to better my role in a story I was already in."

Pressed, Williams acknowledged that he had in fact told inaccurate stories.

"I told stories that were wrong. It was not from a place where I was trying to use my job and title to mislead...I got it wrong. I own this. And I own up to this."

Some media analysts have criticized NBC's choice to air the interview without making Williams available to other media organizations. "NBC is now shamelessly exploiting the Williams scandal to boost its ratings and make still more money from his wrongdoing," said Mark Feldstein, a broadcast journalism professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former journalist at CNN, ABC News and NBC News. "Worse, despite what NBC may say, it is impossible for Lauer to conduct a completely spontaneous interview with the star employee that his bosses are trying to rehabilitate."

Lauer failed to ask Williams tough questions about the status of NBC's internal investigation report on his other inaccurate statements and whether Williams would approve the network releasing it to the public, Feldstein said.

Questions about Williams' dealings with his colleagues in the past about his penchant for story-telling — reports say some NBC colleagues were skeptical about the veracity of some of his other statements even before the scandal broke — should have been posed, Feldstein said.

Contributing: Roger Yu