NBC Nightly News Anchor Discusses Mounting Scandal With Colleagues
BALDWIN: NBC News anchor Brian Williams has now addressed his own colleagues about this mounting scandal that's been surrounding him. Williams had apologized this week, admitted to getting some key facts wrong when he said the helicopter he was in in Iraq back in 2003 was hit by RPG, rocket propelled grenades. He actually in fact was on board a different helicopter. Earlier today, Williams' colleague Chuck Todd told our Michael Smerconish that Williams spoke about this, spoke directly to staffers today about the damage he's done.</s>CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS MODERATOR, MEET THE PRESS: He addressed colleagues this morning about this, all of us. He knows that we're all, you know, this impacts everybody that works at NBC and like I said, he's, you know, pretty remorseful about all this.</s>BALDWIN: And now, the most watched news anchor in America is perhaps more so but for all the wrong reasons. More of his reporting has now come into questions, specifically his signature story, one of his signature stories, hurricane Katrina. I want to bring in our senior media correspondent, host of "RELIABLE SOURCES" Brian Stelter who is with me in New York and Gordon Russell is in New Orleans. He's managing editor of investigations at the New Orleans advocates. So gentlemen, welcome to both of you.</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN HOST, RELIABLE SOURCES: Thank you.</s>GORDON RUSSELL, MANAGING EDITOR OF INVESTIGATIONS, NEW ORLEANS ADVOCATES: Thank you.</s>BALDWIN: Brian, to you first. I wanted to begin talking about the pilot, but you were just telling me two seconds ago, NBC has now released some statement.</s>STELTER: Yes. The first comment in a couple days. And I will tell you about it just a second. But you are right. The pilot we talked about here on air yesterday has recanted his story. And I want to make sure viewers at home know this is the pilot who said that Brian Williams is in his chopper and that they took on small arms fire but were not struck by an RPG. He has now said he's questioning his own memories. This at the same time several other soldiers have come out and said no, actually Brian Williams was in a different chopper. He wasn't in this person's chopper. So it goes to show the continued confusion about this issue and it's something that I have written about on CNNmoney.com about all the process leading up to it. But let me show our viewers what the head of NBC News just said to their staff. She is confirming that there's now an internal investigation going on at NBC into what the heck has happened here. She says quote "we have a team dedicated to gathering the facts" and she goes on to say "we are working on what the next best steps are and when we have something to communicate we will of course share it." So a very vague statement from NBC, but what they are trying to say for the first time is we are aware of all this controversy. We hear all of it and are looking at it. We're working on it.</s>BALDWIN: Gordon, let me turn to you with regard to what's being talked about now with Brian Williams coverage in the thick of, you know, hurricane Katrina. I know that, you know, some of what he said about having dysentery and seeing some bodies floating around his hotel in the French quarter, some calling that into question. This is part of his reporting or his speaking about it a year later.</s>RUSSELL: Yes.</s>BALDWIN: We have that sound. Let's go ahead and roll the sound. Stand by.</s>BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NIGHTLY NEWS ANCHOR: When you look out of your hotel room window in the French quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in</s>BALDWIN: Gordon, you were there. You have a Pulitzer from your coverage of the time in New Orleans. Tell me what you saw.</s>RUSSELL: Well, I mean, of course, there were bodies in the water. That's without a doubt. I think the question that -- the central question that's been raised here is whether he would have seen a body or bodies from his hotel room in the French quarter and it's generally accepted around here that the French quarter didn't flood. In actuality, that's mostly true but there's the edges of the French quarter did get some flood water, fairly shallow flood water. That's where -- he was staying in the Ritz Carlton hotel, which is kind of at the edge of the French quarter. We found some photos today shot from the Ritz Carlton that seemed to show a couple feet of water outside the hotel. It's covering the sidewalk and is in the street. So it's certainly plausible that I don't know how deep the water has to be for a body to float, but it's plausible that he saw something like that there. There wasn't a lot of reports of bodies around that specific part of town. It's also possible that this is like conflated, he's conflating two things. There were bodies certainly not far from there.</s>BALDWIN: And let me just take Brian Williams' side for a moment, Gordon, because at that time during Katrina, you and your colleagues, you did have to debunk a lot of stories, lot of exaggerations from a number of national news reporters, did you not?</s>RUSSELL: Yes, we did. And I should say that a lot of the stories that we debunked were based on bad information being given out by officials, including the mayor and police chief at the time. So it wasn't always a case of irresponsible reporting, but sometimes a case of officials reporting bad information to the press which then circulated it and then later turned out to be untrue.</s>BALDWIN: OK.</s>STELTER: The fact that these are the kind of questions being asked shows why NBC has to do this independent investigation. I think it's notable in the statement that just came out, Brooke, from the head of NBC News, there's no explicit statement of support for Brian Williams. It's much more of a we're looking into this, we are going to figure it out. Very much a network kind of in crisis mode trying to figure out what's true and what's not.</s>BALDWIN: Is he back in the anchor chair tonight?</s>STELTER: He will be on tonight, we are told.</s>BALDWIN: All right, Brian Stelter and Gordon Russell, thank you so much to both of you. You have been watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin live here in New York. I want you to stay right here. Much, much more here on this latest claims from ISIS that it was that Jordanian airstrikes that took the life of that 26-year-old American hostage. I'm Brooke Baldwin. That does it for me. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.