Moments after it was reported Tuesday that longtime funnyman Jon Stewart will retire later this year, NBC News announced its plans to suspend Brian Williams for six months without pay, the two events setting off a storm of speculation and suggestions for the media icons’ respective futures.
“What a remarkable few hours last night!” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough gushed Wednesday, adding “not only in the media landscape but of the cultural landscape of America.”
He continued, suggesting that Stewart, a longtime friend of Williams, may have timed the announcement as a favor to the embattled newsman.
“These guys, apparently, two Jersey guys, apparently spent time together. … I heard about — about he and Springsteen and Jon Stewart walking on the beach down the Jersey Shore some time ago,” Scarborough said.
“It’s hard to not think that Jon Stewart did this as a favor to Brian Williams. And if so, that is a very, very good friend. We should all have such a friend,” he said.
Stewart, who leaves his show after 17 years, announced Tuesday that he will end his run as a fake newsman. Moments later, as social media and newsrooms everywhere were still digesting this news, reports surfaced that NBC News’ top brass had suspended Williams for falsely claiming he had been aboard a U.S. military Chinook helicopter that was brought down by an PRG during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as managing editor and anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately,” NBC president Deborah Turness said in a memo to staff. “We let Brian know of our decision earlier today.”
“This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can — and should — all be proud of. We will get through this together,” Turness said.
For some, the timing of the events provided an opportunity to speculate over the future of the two entertainers.
For example, in an article titled “Why Jon Stewart and Brian Williams should just switch jobs,” the Washington Post’s Terence McCoy, writing in Morning Mix, noted that more than a handful of media types and social media users saw Tuesday’s coinciding events as a perfect opportunity for Stewart to ascend to the throne once held by Williams.
“Despite his protestations to the contrary, Jon Stewart is not exclusively a comedian. … Stewart has become as much a serious media man as anything else,” McCoy said. “Let’s switch one for the other. As one Redditor pointed out: Williams has already ‘proven himself to be good at fake news,’
The New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse was also enthused, asking, “Please raise your hand if you want Jon Stewart to replace Brian Williams at NBC?”
NPR’s Scott Simon surmised that he “can’t be the first person to notice that Brian Williams and Jon Stewart both seem available in about six months.”
Speculation about Stewart and NBC’s evening news may not be entirely speculative, as just a few months ago, when the network sought a replacement for “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, Stewart was among those approached.
“My guess is they were casting as wide and as weird a net as they could,” Stewart told Rolling Stone in 2014, confirming that NBC News was, as the New York Times reported, “ready to back the Brink’s truck up” and pay the comedian a fortune to host the Sunday show. “I’m sure part of them was thinking, ‘Why don’t we just make it a variety show?’ ”
“I felt like that was one of those situations,” he said, “where someone says, ‘We really like what you do. Why don’t you come over here and do something different, maybe something you don’t do as well, for us?’ I can understand notionally where it comes from. News and entertainment have melded in a way. But they would be overcompensating on the entertainment side. That’s certainly not an outlandish decision, although I don’t necessarily think that’s the best direction for it.”
