“The rank and file at MSNBC were furious at Brian,” a source from the network told Page Six. “They hated it so much, they were still mad about it months later at the office Christmas party. That’s where some cheered “F - - k Brian Williams” — It was like a rallying cry.”
On the two-part segment of his show Rock Center, which was cancelled in June 2013, Williams spoke of partisan ranting, and how the partisan networks “do nothing to help compromise in this country.”
The show’s correspondent Ted Koppel also chimed in on the sentiment.
“What works about cable television is it’s cheap and it makes a ton of money. There is nothing cheaper than a bunch of talking heads. The people who hire those talking heads have discovered the more irascible, the more partisan, the nastier they are, the bigger an audience,” Koppel said.
An unnamed staffer at MSNBC told Page Six that the incident took place a few years ago, so the fact that it is being stirred up now is likely the chatter of nervous competitors.
Williams’ new talking head colleagues may not be the only ones he catches some shade from though. According to social media, the general public is also unlikely to stand with him.
Following Williams’ demotion to MSNBC announced last Wednesday, Business Insider, working with digital marketing agency Prime Visibility, found that of the 98,613 tweets posted about Williams, 68.3% were negative.
— Obamaroid Ointment (@Obama_Ointment) May 31, 2015
“The reason that a lying newsman will make it back onto the TV sets of America, is because we have become comfortable living in an empire of lies,” Christopher Simeone, one of the soldiers involved in the helicopter incident that Williams had lied about, wrote in an email message to New York Times.
