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Subscribe to RSSBrian Williams writes: As a lifelong and dedicated magazine reader, I could not believe our good fortune when we hired former Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker. Mark became our Washington Bureau Chief following the death of Tim Russert—a tough job, a big job, and it was so great to have him there. More broadly, it has always been such a luxury to have access to Mark's mind. Harvard-educated, connected, experienced and razor-sharp, he's been part of our on-and-off-air analysis team since the moment he took the position. Sadly for us, Mark is leaving to take a big job at CNN. Which then, in turn, takes our story briefly back to 1994 or so.
I was Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News. Our great veteran travelling producer Russ Moore, who in demeanor and speaking style bore a physical (if not ideological) resemblance to an Ed Rollins/Dick Cheney genetic combination, came to me one day to say it was time to work a young man into the mix. The young man he had in mind had worked his way up from the entry-level rank of intern, and his name was Antoine Sanfuentes. Russ, knowing that music is the way to my heart, quickly added that Antoine was a musician...and a photographer as well. Antoine joined our team, and over millions of miles we had only good times, and never had a cross word. He was a tireless worker, of persistent and endless good cheer and astounding competence and cool under fire for his age...or any age. As the years went by, Antoine stayed at the White House, working with the likes of David Gregory and the late David Bloom—and then worked his way up to Deputy Bureau Chief.
Today Antoine Sanfuentes was named our Washington Bureau Chief by NBC News President Steve Capus. While it admittedly makes me feel old, mostly it makes me enormously proud. Our Washington Bureau is such a crucial part of our operation—and this was such a crucial selection—it is just great news all around.
I'm writing this from our news set, where we were expecting a live statement from the President—which did not happen at the rumored/appointed hour. We are watching the situation in Egypt very closely, as is much of the world—and we'll have the very latest for you tonight, including the reporting of Richard Engel, at street level in Cairo. Importantly: The White House is not denying that there is contingency planning underway should Mubarak be deposed, among other options. This sure looks and sounds like a revolution in the making, to many of those who are watching. It’s certainly an event of great moment, perhaps in its early stages, for Egypt and that entire region of the world.
On another note: Watch our music site for the interview I conducted today with the astonishingly talented Lissie, a musician I'm proud to have first mentioned on Jimmy Fallon's show months ago. You'll get to see her on Jimmy's show soon. First, you'll get to see our conversation and her performance in the days ahead. We'll alert you when it’s up.
We hope you can join us tonight for our Friday night broadcast.
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Brian, I was mesmerized by President Obama's speech in Cairo when he was there which called for a
New Beginning and I would like to quote this sentence which is approp: "The United States has been
on of the greatest sources of progress that this world has known. We were born of revolution against
an empire. I will be glued to the tv this weekend. Phyllis
Good Evening Mr.Williams, An excellent broadcast this evening. Superb reporting by Richard from Cairo amidst the violent uprising of protests against the Egyptian gov. which seem to be a revolution. Richard is certainly brave as always being on the ground reporting with protestors grabbing onto him at one point overcome by the tear gas along with Richard even getting affected by the tear gas. A dangerous, tense situation in the cities of Suez, Alexandria and Cairo today. The people of Egypt are truly revolting against the government of Hosni Mubarek and are demanding change at once. One wonders if the changes Mubarek is making to his cabinet will have any affect on the people's opinion. Most likely not right now. Only time will tell.
Richard's report from the streets of Cairo really showed such violence against the riot police with throwing of pieces of pavement and explosions setting cars afire to tear gas being used by the police. Huge massiev crowds all around the streets and Richard is truly brave being amidst the chaos along with having to run away from being affected too much by the tear gas. The Egyptians had enough with their government and certainly are revealing their discontent. As Richard stated if the Islamic groups run for power again major changes will happen.
Richard has spent four years in the region of Cairo previously in his career with much knowledge. Returning this time shows a different picture. The anger centered at riot police is evident, yet they have respect for the Egyptain army. Hearing about people forming a human chain around the Egyptian museum was interesting as they were trying to protect the treasures inside.
What will happen tomorrow will again reveal how this will play out over the course of the next several days. As Richard held up the tear gas canisters with "Made in the USA" printed in them it can show the Egyptians what close ties the US has to Egypt. The United States walking a fine line with dealing in this tense situation.
Superb, Excellent Reporting Richard! Please Stay Extra,Extra Safe Always! You are truly being part of an historic event. Take extra care to stay safe!
On another note the piece by Mr.Costello on remembering the Challenger tragedy 25 yrs ago today recalls where one was in hearing the news. It was moving to see the high school where Christa McAuliffe taught and was chosen to go on the space shuttle Challenger. It is nice the widow of astronaut Dick Scobee began Challenger Learning Centers. Thousands of children can learn from the loss and grief and transition to the next chapter of the space shuttle. So very sad remembering the day it happened. Always remember them.
Thank You for the broadcast Mr.Williams. Following all the developments in Egypt. Have a wonderful weekend Mr.Williams. Peace to You and to All!
Be Well Everyone!
Stay Extra,Extra Safe and Well Richard! Excellent Reporting As Always! Take Extra Good Care!
More Developments to Follow!
Take Extra Good Care Richard and Crew!
Lisa
Brian a seed was planted and now it's growing. Obama spoke to young people and as you pointed out the age of people in the middle east. What's interesting is most officials in the US have no idea what the culture or laws are in other countries. This has been building up for many years but now the Middle East people have a US President who is young enough to understand and educated enough to know their culture. Education US officials isn't high on the list in the House/Congress/Senate as we're seen Law Makers don't even know how the US Government works. NBC did good hiring Richard as he is the best qualified for reporting Foreign news.
Have a great weekend all and stay warm/safe
Hello there, Brian! While I would start this off with my usual "good evening", it's obvious that I'm writing this at 2am on a Saturday. Firstly, I'm sorry that the NBC family will have to say good bye and good luck to Mark Whitaker, but I congratulate and wish him all the best at CNN. I spent a lot of my time this Friday reading and watching the events in Egypt, and just have to say what an excellent job Richard Engel did at NBC News and MSNBC today. Great thanks to him for all of his dedicated work, and I hope he stays clear of the tear gas out there on the streets on Cairo. It was awful to see him getting caught in the tear gas today, but I suppose he would say it's just something that comes with the territory of his job. (Stay safe and well out there, Richard!) Thanks to all of you for the great coverage of this important time in history. These movements in the Middle East could be compared to those in Europe years ago, and it's something to watch for sure. I hope that only good things will come of them, and I'll continue to watch closely with you all.
On the subject of music: SO great to hear that you have interviewed Lissie! I last listened to her music literally under 10 minutes ago, and am still stuck most of her music, as well as Florence and the Machine. My current favorites of Florence and the Machine are "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", "Cosmic Love" and "Blinding". As for Lissie's new album, I love "Everywhere I Go", "When I'm Alone" and "In Sleep". Anyway, I could honestly spend all night on this, but I will just leave it here and say that I look very much forward to your upcoming interview with Lissie! Thanks for keeping it going for all of us fellow music lovers!
I wish you a good night and a pleasant tomorrow! Take care as always!
-Cary
On Tuesday, Nightly News ran a 2:10 story about this year's Oscar nominees that featured multiple clips from the favored contenders. Let's forget (for the moment) that the Nightly News producers are constantly peppering their newscast with movie and TV clips in order to pander to the viewers who like their news to be less Nicolas Sarkozy and more Nicolas Cage, less Angela Merkel and more Angelina Jolie. I'll get to that later. During Tuesday's Oscar story, there were several clips each from "The King's Speech", "The Social Network", and "True Grit". In the first three "True Grit" clips, Jeff Bridges was wearing his eye patch on his right eye. But in the last clip from that movie, Bridges's eye patch was on his left eye. Obviously, the Nightly News producers flipped the image for the sake of convenience. They wanted Bridges to appear to be looking at Jesse Eisenberg, whose character from "The Social Network" was also on the screen. This is appallingly unethical. News producers are not permitted to alter photographic or video images for the sake of convenience. They are not allowed to flip images, they are not allowed to add or remove any subject matter from images (unless it is to block inappropriate subject matter such as violence or nudity) and they are not allowed to doctor images to make them appear older (a favorite tactic of the Nightly News producers). A news broadcast has an obligation to show news images as they actually appear, not as the producers want them to be seen.
The Nightly News producers' inappropriate flipping of Bridges's image raises serious ethical questions. How often do they alter photos or videos? Do they add or remove people from photos whenever they feel like it? What else do they do? Did Friday's purported video images of protesters in Egypt depict what actually happened? Or did the producers use stock footage or alter the video to make the story more compelling? We don't know. If they would alter an image of Jeff Bridges, who knows what else they would alter? Once that door is open, it's hard to close. And by the way, not only wasn't it ethical to flip Bridges's image, it also wasn't very smart. Why on earth would the producers choose to flip an image of someone wearing an eye patch? That made their actions pretty obvious. Why didn't they instead flip Eisenberg's image to make him look at Bridges? Since Eisenberg's image was symmetrical, no one would have noticed.
It's certainly no surprise that Nightly News did a story about the Oscars. Without a doubt, Nightly News is the industry leader when it comes to using movie and TV clips in their evening newscast. In 2010, Nightly News used movie and TV clips in 110 of their 347 broadcasts. (Keep in mind that many of these broadcasts used multiple clips in different stories on the same night. For example, on May 24, Nightly News managed to include clips from "Blackhawk Down", "A League of Their Own" and "Law & Order" in three different stories.) At the beginning of the year, "Avatar" and "Up In The Air" clips were among the Nightly News favorites. Later in the year, "Inception", "The Social Network" and "The King's Speech" were popular. (Often, clips are featured simply because Brian Williams likes a particular movie or TV show. On Nov. 10, the broadcast featured clips from "Mad Men"--one of Brian's favorites--in two different stories.) On April 5 and April 8, Nightly News used two different Gene Hackman clips for different stories. (The April 5 clip featured Hackman in "Hoosiers" as part of a story about Butler University in the NCAA Final Four. Three days later, they used a clip of Hackman in "Crimson Tide" during a story about a smoking ban in Navy submarines.) Of course, the TV clips featured on Nightly News are predominantly from NBC shows like "Saturday Night Live", "30 Rock", "The Office", "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon". (And when the clips are from a show on another network, they make certain to obscure that fact as much as possible. On 11/12/08, a Nightly News story featured a clip of John McCain on David Letterman's show without showing a single image of Letterman himself or even mentioning Letterman's name!) After all, what's the purpose of having a news broadcast if you can't use it to promote your network's entertainment shows and DVDs? When "Law & Order" was cancelled, Nightly News did four separate stories about it, and all of them included clips from the show. A July 27 story about bedbugs featured Alec Baldwin's character from "30 Rock" screaming about bedbugs on a New York subway. A Sept. 1 story about office gossip featured a clip from--you guessed it--"The Office" (it's obvious that this story was contrived solely as a way to allow the producers to run the clip). Of course, these clips don't help the viewers understand the story any better, they just ensure that we keep watching. Any time a former NBC TV star dies (such as Merlin Olsen, Rue McClanahan, Pernell Roberts or Robert Culp), Nightly News makes certain to run an obituary (filled with old TV clips) because these shows' DVDs are still available for sale at the NBC/Universal store. Certain movie clips are featured on Nightly News (such as from the "Harry Potter" series or "The Blues Brothers") because they promote rides or events at Universal Studios theme parks. Naturally, the main reason why Nightly News shows film or movie clips is to promote NBC/Universal properties. But another reason is simply to maintain the viewers' attention. People are more likely to watch (and to watch again in the future) when they are bombarded by a constant stream of movie and TV clips. "Oh look, George Clooney!"; "Hey, that's Betty White on 'SNL'!"; "Cool--another 'Seinfeld' clip!" Brian Williams, Steve Capus and the Nightly News producers know that even during a newscast, people would much rather see entertainment than news. During a Dec. 18 Nightly News story about Amelia Earhart, they made sure to show superfluous clips from the "Amelia" movie that starred Hilary Swank, even though the story already contained a significant amount of actual Earhart footage. They didn't really need to show the movie clips, but of course they still did. Pandering to the viewers' love of entertainment is one of the ways Nightly News manages to remain the top-rated newscast. It's all part of NBC's strategy to make Nightly News indistinguishable from the shows that follow it: "Extra" and "Access Hollywood".
Brian: The countries involved in the latest uprisings in the Middle East are definately showing a revolutionary spirit by the masses. Richar Engel has done a fine job reporting from Cairo, as to be expected. This is a fluid breaking news story. Mubarak has thrown the old cabinet out, but remains in power. He must step down because the masses demand it. I'll be following these stories on line and on MSNBC.
With our right wing media stifling our free spreech.example firing Kieth Olberman.Our massive corporate machine making a mockery of the right to vote by stifling all opinions but the corporate bosses.The picture we see in Egypt is our future.
Good Evening, This comment is in regards to Saturday's broadcast of Nightly News -1/29/2011. Excellent job by Kate Snow on the broadcast this evening. Richard has been doing an extraordinary job covering the uprisings in Egypt. Truly superb Richard!
Richard's report this evening showed extremely massive crowds taking to the streets of Cairo demonstrating against the Egyptian government. The crowds appearing jubilant as they cheered in the city. Yet, there was much destruction from Friday as many buildings smoldered from fires and seeing Richard standing in front of the headquarters building after being picked apart and burned was awful. Being so near the museum with all the wonderful Egyptian treasures one hopes the artifacts will be protected as the army quickly took over protecting them. Still the destruction remains and looting is rampant in the area. As Richard pointed out it looks more like the city along the Tigris-Baghdad than the city aong the Nile-Cairo. Richard certainly was amidst the crowds even on top of one of the tanks while reporting within the crowd. Everyone in the region appears to be out protesting as Richard showed which reveals so much how the government may be too overwhelmed and on the verge of collapsing. A scary situation as residents are afraid and taking up weapons to protect their homes. An extremely tense situation which has been building over many years and finally reached the boiling point.
One hopes their will be something to come out of all these demonstrations which will be good for the people of the country. Brave people and one hopes for peace.
Excellent Job Richard! Watched so many of your reports on Today, MSNBC and Nightly News all fantastic reporting! Please Stay Extra,Extra Safe and Well Always! I hope you have the chance to get some rest! You have been working tirelessly.
The analysis by Mr.Fletcher about how these uprisings have spread across the Middle East was very interesting. Certain groups gaining power could result in even more discontent within these countries causing more violence. The impact felt all over the Middle East. Excellent analysis by Mr.Fletcher with his invaluable knowledge and experience reporting from the region over many years.
The report by Mr.Cowan showed how protests here in this country have spread and the worry of people who have loved ones living in the area hoping they are okay.
Thank You for the broacast Kate Snow. Great job! Peace to You and to All!
Be Well Everyone!
Stay Extra,Extra Safe and Well Richard! Incredible Reporting Richard! You are doing a fantastic job!
Take Extra Good Care Richard and Crew!
Lisa
The news from Egypt is frightening. Stay safe, all. Phyllis Kunz