Late Sunday afternoon, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported the latest information in the ongoing Brian Williams controversy with the news that the NBC Nightly News anchor has cancelled an appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman after reports initially suggested that he was planning to use it to clear the air and answer the many questions surrounding him.
The cancellation comes a day after Williams issued a statement announcing that he will be removing himself from the anchor desk “for the next several days” after realizing that it had “become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news due to my actions.”
In an article for CNN Money, Stelter indicated that the decision was made after Williams considered “the uncertainty about when he’ll be back at his anchor desk”:
But until Sunday afternoon he was still scheduled to show up for his date with Letterman on Thursday.
The sudden change reflects the chaotic situation behind the scenes at NBC News and among Williams' representatives.
On Sunday morning, a spokeswoman for the “Late Show” said there had been no change to the plans for Williams to appear on Letterman's show.
Around the same time, a source close to Williams said it was “undecided” if Williams would still appear, saying the network hadn't considered the question yet.
Later in the day, the same source said the appearance was off. Williams has no other television appearances on the books.
Appearing with CNN’s Poppy Harlow on the 5:00 p.m. hour of CNN’s Newsroom, Stelter noted that there’s near unanimous consensus among those in the news industry that “Williams has to tell his side of the story and explain what is going on, because the silence is not helping at this point.”
Stelter also gave his take on the development and whether he thinks Williams does want to answer for his behavior: “The sense I get is that he would like to talk. The question is whether it would help or hurt to talk and whether or not the network is going to do that.”
Ironically, it was on Letterman’s program on March 26, 2013 that Williams repeated his lie about being shot down by an RPG over Iraq in March 2003. When Williams apologized on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday for telling the false story on January 30's Nightly News, he made no mention of how he had told the same lie on multiple occasions.
