Reports: Brian Williams Not Coming Back As 'Nightly News' Anchor
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Embattled NBC News anchor Brian Williams will stay at the network, but will not be returning to anchor the Nightly News program, according to a report Wednesday night.
A CNN report said NBC has come to a tentative agreement with Williams when his six-month suspension ends in August, and an official announcement on his future could come as early as Thursday.
Lester Holt is expected continue on a permanent basis as anchor of the NBC Nightly News, CNN reported.
Williams, has been serving the suspension for telling tall tales about his coverage of a 2003 Iraq War mission.
Williams apologized for falsely claiming that he was in helicopter that had been hit by a grenade while in Iraq in 2003 a week earlier during a "Nightly News" tribute to a veteran he had befriended during his trip. Before expressing his regrets on the air, Williams did so online and in an interview with the newspaper Stars & Stripes.
He speculated online that constant viewing of video showing him inspecting the damaged helicopter "and the fog of memory over 12 years, made me conflate the two, and I apologize."
His story had morphed through the years.
Shortly after the incident, Williams had described on NBC how he was traveling in a group of helicopters forced down in the Iraq desert. On the ground, he learned the Chinook in front of him "had almost been blown out of the sky;" he showed a photo of it with a gash from a rocket-propelled grenade.
The NBC crew and military officials accompanying them spent three days in the desert, kept aground by a sandstorm.
But in a 2008 blog post, Williams said his helicopter had come under fire from what appeared to be Iraqi farmers with RPGs. He said a helicopter in front of his had been hit.
Then, in a 2013 appearance on David Letterman's "Late Show," Williams said that two of the four helicopters he was traveling with had been hit by ground fire "including the one I was in."
An NBC internal investigation turned up a number of other misstatements by Williams.
