“Anyone who talks about you…or your business…is media!”
I use that brief slogan above for my own business as both a warning, and a fact. The Internet has given the ability to publish to anyone who can get online. And if they’re talking about you, the same Internet hands them a digital steam shovel to dig up all that’s available about you,
That’s exactly what’s happened to NBC News anchor Brian Williams. His fabricated story about being in a helicopter shot down over Iraq in 2003 is the proverbial pebble that’s disturbed calm waters. The ripple effect keeps enlarging every day. There are many articles springing from this particular “pebble”. This Politico piece is just one of them, yet illustrative of the examples of more embellishments, if not false stories, attributed to Williams.
Each of us needs to take heed since each of us, to some degree, is subject to similar examination. It may be unfair. But it’s a fact of life today and promises to only increase as, too, does access to information that can be mined and distributed.
Brian Williams really has only himself to blame. Before the Internet, there was a greater chance his first offense would’ve been reported, apologized for, and forgotten, perhaps to be exhumed as part of his obit years later. Not now, however. It has taken on a life of its own and might lead to his professional demise.
