Rise and ouster at NBC Nightly News
Williams became anchor of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004, replacing the retiring Tom Brokaw. In December 2004, when Williams took the helm, he had to apologize for saying there are "bigger problems" than newsroom diversity. NBC News President Neal Shapiro vowed to redouble the company's minority hiring efforts.
His coverage of Hurricane Katrina was widely praised, particularly "for venting his anger and frustration over the government's failure to act quickly to help the victims." The network was awarded a Peabody, the committee concluding that "Williams, and the entire staff of NBC Nightly News exemplified the highest levels of journalistic excellence." Williams accepted the award on behalf of the organization. NBC Nightly News also earned the George Polk Award and the duPont-Columbia University Award for its Katrina coverage. Vanity Fair called Williams' work on Katrina "Murrow-worthy" and reported that during the hurricane, he became "a nation's anchor". The New York Times characterized Williams' reporting of the hurricane as "a defining moment". However, Williams' statements about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were received with scrutiny. For example, Williams referred inconsistently to a suicide inside the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina. CNN reported in a 2005 television documentary that Williams said he was not a witness to the suicide: "We heard the story of a man killing himself, falling from the upper deck."
Appearing on The Daily Show in August 2006, Williams told host Jon Stewart that he was nearly hit the previous month by Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah while flying in an Israeli Air Force (IAF) Black Hawk helicopter: "Here's a view of rockets I have never seen, passing underneath us, 1,500 feet beneath us. And we've got the gunner doors on this thing, and I'm saying to the general, some four-star: 'It wouldn't take much for them to adjust the aim and try to do a ring toss right through our open doors, would it?' Anytime you want to cross over to the other side, baby, travel with me." The claim was drawn into question since there are no four-star generals in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israeli helicopter doors are routinely closed during flights and the IAF's Black Hawks do not carry gunners. An IDF spokesman who was on the helicopter in question did confirm afterwards that there was Katyusha fire and, although the helicopter was not in danger, the "trajectory of the rockets was beneath us."
In 2007, Time magazine named Williams one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
In 2009, Williams was awarded the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism by Arizona State University. At the announcement of the award, Cronkite said he was one of Williams' "ardent admirers" and described him as a "fastidious newsman" who brought credit to the television news reporting profession.
While anchoring the Nightly News, Williams received 12 News & Documentary Emmy Awards. For "outstanding" work as anchor and managing editor of the Nightly News, he received one Emmy in 2006 (for Nightly News coverage of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina), two in 2007, one in 2009, two in 2010, one in 2011, one in 2013, and one in 2014. The 2014 Emmy honor was awarded to Nightly News for its coverage of a deadly series of tornadoes in Oklahoma, for which it also received the duPont-Columbia University Award.
Williams also received a 2012 Emmy for his interview program Rock Center and a 2013 Emmy for being one of the executive producers and editors of a documentary on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. He also shared a 2014 Emmy awarded for an NBC News Special on the Boston Marathon bombing.
Based on Nielsen ratings results from late 2008, Williams' news broadcast consistently had more viewers than its two main rivals, being ABC's World News Tonight and CBS Evening News. On this note, NBC Nightly News beat the other two network programs in the Nielsen ratings all but one week from late 2008 to late 2014.
On February 4, 2015, Williams apologized for and recanted his then-disproven Iraq War story, which he had told on a Nightly News broadcast on January 30, 2015. He claimed that while he was flying in a military helicopter it had been "forced down after being hit by an RPG". Soon after it aired, Williams' story was criticized by Lance Reynolds, a flight engineer on board one of the three Chinook helicopters that had been attacked. Reynolds and other crew members said Williams had been aboard a separate group of helicopters from the helicopter that had been fired upon. Williams' helicopter was flying about half an hour behind and was forced to make an emergency landing because of a sandstorm rather than an attack. In a February 5, 2015 interview on CNN, the pilot of the Chinook in which Williams was traveling said that while the aircraft did not sustain RPG fire, it did indeed sustain small-arms fire and that the door gunners returned fire. Williams then claimed that several rounds missed him "by inches", which the Chinook crew chief denied. On February 10, 2015, NBC News President Deborah Turness suspended Williams without pay for six months from his position as Managing Editor and Anchor of the Nightly News broadcast for lying and for having misrepresented the Iraq incident. On June 18, 2015, he was demoted to breaking news anchor for MSNBC. At the time, his salary was $10 million a year, with a five-year contract signed in December 2014.
