I actually believe Brian Williams' trip to Baghdad wasn't some cheap stunt to goose ratings and propel the temporarily-second-ranked "Nightly News" past the temporarily-first-ranked "World News."
Seriously.
No kidding.
No cynicism here, implied and otherwise.
By now, drive-by Romenesko readers have picked up Gail Shister's piece today in the Philly Inquirer, in which NBC News chief Steve Capus indignantly responds to her doubtless accurate observation that some industry types - shorthand for public relations officials at ABC and CBS - have sniggered and snorted that Williams got dressed up in his best Dan-Rather-safari-Banana-Republic outfits and headed straight to the Green Zone where he could then bigfoot Richard Engel and move the Nielsen needle northwards.
Noted Capus (indignantly - but I think I already said that): "That is gross, disgusting. I would expect better from people in this industry. We don't put people in harm's way as cheap ratings ploys."
Whether he doth protest too much is for wiser heads to determine, but "gross [and] disgusting" is not sending an anchor to cover the biggest story in the world; "gross and disgusting" are some of the midseason pilots.
In fact, I think Williams' trip probably had more to do with the summary firing of "Nightly" producer John Reiss last week and the appointment of onetime CBS News producer Alexandra Wallace than anything else. Look at this way: Reiss is fired and then Brian heads to Iraq. Is there a connection? Was Reiss standing in the way of Williams' desire to head overseas? Did Reiss want a higher domestic story count than Williams did? And speaking of ratings, there was once a feeling in the news magazine world - and presumably it so remains - that anything to do with Iraq was ratings poison. So one could even argue that a Williams trip to Iraq would do nothing for the numbers - other than depress them.
My sense on all this is that Williams is doing what he should be doing, which is to plant his flag on a story of massive proportions. He should be doing this more frequently and more aggressively, because the more times someone of Williams' stature goes to Iraq - and accords it even greater attention – the more times viewers will have an opportunity to understand the mess we’re in. And the flip side of klieg-light journalism of this sort: They’ll learn conceivable ways we might one day be able extricate ourselves.
By the way, based on Monday's program, Williams' work there has been exemplary (and almost always has been in years' past); he didn't sequester himself in the Green Zone but got on a Black Hawk and flew to Ramadi with a three-star general. He didn't even bigfoot the always-exemplary Engel either who had a fine piece on Sadr City.
My free advice to Brian: Ignore the natterers and keep building your frequent flyer miles.
BW in NO - and he did fine work there, too.