Fire Brian Williams? Let's not get carried away

I don't watch the evening news.

I'm not sure if that discredits me as a journalist or not, but not since leaving my parents' house back in 1999 have I been a regular watcher of the nightly national news.

Oh, those dinners with our dining room TV tuned to "World News Tonight." Mom was an excellent cook, but dinner could feel like a sort of prison to my adolescent self, with Peter Jennings (may he rest in peace) as my stoic, monotonous, Canadian warden.

I'd like to believe it's generational as much as anything. It's not as if I don't consume the news. I have the Internet, morning and evening local news, magazines and, of course, newspapers.

But those opening trumpets of "World News Tonight" haunt me still.

So perhaps this tempers my opinion about the Brian Williams fiasco that has dominated the news cycle in recent days. But I will say this:

Brian Williams does not need to be fired.

Demoted? Probably.

Docked pay? Likely.

Reprimanded by NBC? Absolutely.

Publicly shamed? Kind of feels like that's taking care of itself, doesn't it?

(While writing this, I've learned Williams has been suspended for six months. I can live with that.)

I don't want to put myself in a position of defending Williams. He did something idiotic that has the potential to destroy a long, respected, lucrative career as a television journalist.

Why did he think he could get away with it? Didn't he realize that there were a bunch of soldiers who were there as well? Did he not think one of them might watch Letterman and think, "...but that's not how I remember it..."?

All ethics of the matter aside, we just don't live in a day and age when those kinds lies can stay hidden forever. The Internet and TV make it nearly impossible.

On the other hand, we live in a day and age of some blurry lines when it comes to journalistic ethics. We're expected to be informative, but we need to be entertaining as well.

And being entertaining doesn't always go hand in hand with the absolute truth.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?

Of course, I'd never say that in my professional life, but as a storyteller, sitting down with a few beers, I've certainly stretched the truth.

Telling stories around a campfire? Let's just say I can be liberal with the truth in that setting.

But those are times when I want to entertain my buddies, not inform my readers.

Did Williams forget where he was as he told and retold (and changed and rechanged) that story? Was the quest for ratings so great that he needed to accentuate what I imagine was already a pretty remarkable story?

I can relate in that when I write a blog or a column, the standards are slightly different. If I'm writing about my son being sick last night, I might say he threw up three times. If it turns out it was only two, then I have, indeed, told a lie. The difference is, I'm not lying about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, just the relative grossness of my Tuesday morning.

So we can all agree, Williams was wrong. He looks like really bad. It's going to take a lot for him to regain our trust.

But he should get the chance to regain our trust.

Get him back out there in the field. Send him back to Iraq or some other war zone where he can reprove the reliability of his reporting.

Williams has taken quite a tumble in recent days. The worst thing NBC and America could do is not give him a chance to climb back up.