OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2015
D AILY A STORIAN Brian Williams’ ticking time bomb
T HE
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
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CARL EARL, Systems Manager
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DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
SAMANTHA MCLAREN, Circulation Manager
Port of Astoria
gets a do-over
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times News Service
W
ASHINGTON — This
was a bomb that had
been ticking for a while.
NBC executives were warned
a year ago that Brian Williams was
FRQVWDQWO\ LQÀDWLQJ KLV ELRJUDSK\
7KH\ ZHUH ÀXPPR[HG RYHU ZK\
the leading network anchor felt
that he needed Hemingwayesque,
EXOOHWVZKL]]LQJE\ ÀRXULVKHV WR
puff himself up, sometimes to the
point where it was a joke in the news
division.
But
the
caustic media
big shots who
once roamed
the land were
gone,
and
“there was no
one around to
pull his chain
he Port of Astoria has a burden in its lease to Brad when he got
Maureen
Smithart, who operates the Astoria Riverwalk Inn — the too over-the-
top,” as one
Dowd
remade Red Lion Inn. Smithart owes some 18 months of lease NBC News re-
payments to the Port. He also owes overdue room tax money porter put it.
It seemed pathological because
to the city of Astoria.
Williams already had the premier
It appears that Smithart wants property. It is understandable that job, so why engage in résumé in-
to sell his lease to another operator. the Port did not want to make that flation? And you don’t get those
because of your derring-do.
But the Port Commission must cash outlay. But demolishing the jobs When
Williams was declared
agree to that transfer.
decrepit motel and starting over the hair apparent to Tom Bro-
The essence of the choice is the only way to go. Putting kaw in 1995, hailed by Jay Leno
Port commissioners made in money into a waterfront property as “NBC’s stud muffin,” I did a
column wondering why TV news
giving Smithart the lease on the that is falling apart is a losing programs only hired pretty white
former Red Lion property is that proposition.
male clones. I asked Williams if
they passed up a professional
While Astoria has been he was an anchor android.
“Not that I’m aware of,” he
KRVSLWDOLW\ ¿UP ² (VFDSH enjoying an explosion of quality
said gamely, in his anchor-desk
Lodging — in favor of an hotel projects — Cannery Pier, baritone. “I can deny the exis-
inexperienced, untried operator. (OOLRWW+DPSWRQ,QQ+ROLGD\,QQ tence of a factory in the American
Headquartered in Cannon Beach, — the Port is sitting on one of the Midwest that puts out people like
me.”
(VFDSH /RGJLQJ RSHUDWHV WKH best hotel sites in town.
Williams told friends last week
Ocean View Lodge and other
Port Commissioners and that he felt anguished, coming un-
hotel properties on the coast and staff will have an opportunity to der fire for his false story of com-
LQ(DVWHUQ2UHJRQ
make a choice that would make ing under fire.
Although the NBC anchor had
The key element of the Astorians proud. In the parlance repeated the Iraq war tall tale,
(VFDSH /RGJLQJ SURSRVDO ZDV of sports, the Port will soon have ever more baroquely, for more
than a decade, when he cited it
demolition of the Red Lion a do-over.
on his Jan. 30 broadcast during a
segment about going to a Rang-
ers game with a retired, decorat-
ed soldier who had been on the
ground that day when he landed,
Williams got smacked down on
Facebook.
A crew member from a Chi-
nook flying ahead of Williams,
who was involved in the 2003
firefight, posted, “Sorry dude, I
don’t remember you being on my
aircraft. I do remember you walk-
hey are cool dinosaur
Society is spending a vast ing up about an hour after we had
descendants. But we don’t sum on salmon recovery. At landed to ask me what had hap-
T
Despite bad experience, waterfront
hotel site is one of the best
Time to restore
natural balance
T
Cormorants are overrunning lower
Columbia salmon population
need so many of them.
It’s comparatively easy to
learn what is killing young
salmon on their migration to
the ocean, but it has proven
exceptionally difficult to do
much about it. So it is for
double-crested
cormorants
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Chinook,Wash., where a bird
colony eats about 11 million
juvenile salmon and steelhead
each year. By one calculation,
this resulted in 740,000
fewer returning adult salmon
between 2010 and 2013.
This issue is the opposite
of a mystery. The great-
great-grandfathers of today’s
fishermen were concerned
about the same problem more
than a century ago. Back then,
the drastic solution was to
kill everything that competed
with humans for salmon, to
the extent that fish-eating
birds and sea mammals were
drastically cut back.
Most modern residents
understand the desirability of
a diverse ecosystem. We want
all creatures to prosper. This
includes cormorants.
It’s hard to look at a
hummingbird and believe it
is a descendant of dinosaurs,
but cormorants look as though
they could be direct survivors
from the Jurassic period.
With close-cropped black
feathers and a sort of hunched-
shoulders demeanor, when
they spread their wings to
dry while perched on pilings,
it’s easy to see their inner-
pterodactyl.
some point — and that point is
now — it is time to rebalance
the equation toward making
sure that fewer of these
expensive young salmon end
up as bird food for an avian
species that is obviously doing
quite well in this region.
“Avian predation upon
Columbia
River
salmon
stocks has grown to become
the single-largest, unchecked
impact on their sustainability.
... After more than a decade
of research, we can no longer
afford to study cormorant
impacts without addressing
their threats to salmon
recovery,” said Paul Lumley,
executive director of the
Columbia River Inter-Tribal
Fish Commission in Portland.
No one better understands
the need for long-term balance
than the river’s treaty tribes.
We should listen to them.
The U.S. Army Corps of
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11,000 adult cormorants on
the island. Along with other
steps, including making sure
some eggs don’t hatch, this
will bring the colony into
better alignment with modern
realities.
None of the rationality of
wildlife management measures
such as these will keep the
most avid environmental
groups from suing to try to
block them. But mature and
responsible stewardship often
requires assisting nature in
maintaining the right balance.
That is what is should happen
here.
Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Actress Allison Williams poses
with her father NBC News anchor
Brian Williams at HBO’s “Girls”
fourth season premiere party at
The American Museum of Natural
History Jan. 5 in New York.
Frothy morning
shows long ago
became the more
important anchoring
real estate.
pened.” Stars and Stripes ran with
it.
Social media — the genre that
helped make the TV evening news
irrelevant by showing us that we
don’t need someone to tell us ev-
ery night what happened that day
— was gutting the institution fur-
ther.
Although Williams’ determi-
nation to wrap himself in others’
valor is indefensible, it seems
almost redundant to gnaw on his
bones, given the fact that the In-
ternet has already taken down a
much larger target: the long-in-
grained automatic impulse to turn
on the TV when news happens.
Although there was much chat-
ter about the “revered” anchor
and the “moral authority” of the
networks, does anyone really feel
that way anymore? Frothy morn-
ing shows long ago became the
more important anchoring real
estate, garnering more revenue
and subsidizing the news divi-
sion. One anchor exerted moral
authority once and that was Wal-
ter Cronkite, because he risked
his career to go on TV and tell the
truth about the fact that we were
losing the Vietnam War.
But TV news now is rife with
cat, dog and baby videos, weath-
er stories and narcissism. And
even that fare caused trouble for
Williams when he reported on
a video of a pig saving a baby
goat, admitting “We have no way
of knowing if it’s real,” and then
later had to explain that it wasn’t.
The nightly news anchors are not
figures of authority. They’re part
of the entertainment, branding
and cross-promotion business.
Former ABC News anchor Di-
ane Sawyer trended on Facebook
for reportedly scoring the first in-
terview about Bruce Jenner’s gen-
der odyssey.
When current ABC News an-
chor David Muir was still a cor-
respondent, some NBC News re-
porters had a drinking game about
how many times he put himself in
the shot and how many times his
shirt was unbuttoned.
As the late-night comic an-
chors got more pointed and edgy
with the news, the real anchors
mimicked YouTube.
Williams did a piece on his
daughter Allison’s casting in an
NBC production of Peter Pan.
And Muir aired an Access Holly-
wood-style segment with Bradley
Cooper.
As the performers — Jon Stew-
art, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver
and Bill Maher — were doing
more serious stuff, the supposedly
serious guys were doing more per-
forming. The anchors pack their
Hermès ties and tight T-shirts and
fly off to hot spots for the perfor-
mance aspect, because the exotic
and dangerous backdrops confer
the romance of Hemingway cov-
ering the Spanish Civil War.
Oliver, who has made waves
with pieces on financial chica-
nery in the Miss America contest
and the corporate players trying
to undermine net neutrality, told
The Verge that he is hiring more
researchers with backgrounds in
investigative journalism.
Meanwhile, in an interview
with Fusion, Muir acted out the
facial expressions he uses during
his broadcast: “the listening face,”
the “really listening” face, and the
“really concerned” face. All that
was missing was “Blue Steel.”
With no pushback from the
brass at NBC, Williams has spent
years fervently “courting celebri-
ty,” as The Hollywood Reporter
put it, guest starring on 30 Rock,
slow-jamming the news with Jim-
my Fallon and regaling David
Letterman with his faux heroics:
“Two of our four helicopters were
hit by ground fire, including the
one I was in, RPG and AK-47.”
As his profession shrinks and
softens, Williams felt compelled
to try to steal the kind of glory
that can only be earned the hard
way.
Nobody understands how debt works
governments haven’t been
Which brings us to cur-
making a serious effort to
rent events, for there is a
tighten their belts, and that
direct connection between
the overall failure to de-
any economists, including what the world needs is, yes,
more
austerity.
But
we
have,
leverage and the emerging
Janet
Yellen,
view
in fact, had unprecedented
SROLWLFDOFULVLVLQ(XURSH
global economic troubles since austerity. As the Interna-
(XURSHDQOHDGHUVFRP-
2008 largely as a story about tional Monetary Fund has
pletely bought into the
notion that the economic
“deleveraging” — a simultaneous pointed out, real government
spending
excluding
interest
crisis was brought on by
attempt by debtors almost
has fallen across wealthy
too much spending, by na-
Paul
everywhere to reduce their nations — there have been
tions living beyond their
Krugman
means. The way forward,
liabilities.
deep cuts by the troubled
Chancellor Angela Merkel
Why is deleveraging a problem? GHEWRUVRI6RXWKHUQ(XURSH
but there have also been cuts in coun- of Germany insisted, was a return
Because my spending is your in- tries, like Germany and the United WR IUXJDOLW\ (XURSH VKH GHFODUHG
come, and your spending is my in- States, that can borrow at some of the should emulate the famously thrifty
come, so if everyone slashes spend- lowest interest rates in history.
Swabian housewife.
ing at the same time, incomes go
This was a prescription for
All this austerity has, however,
down around the world.
only made things worse — and pre- VORZPRWLRQ GLVDVWHU (XURSHDQ
Or as Yellen put it in 2009, “Pre- dictably so, because demands that debtors did, in fact, need to tighten
cautions that may be smart for in- everyone tighten their belts were their belts — but the austerity they
GLYLGXDOV DQG ¿UPV ² DQG LQGHHG based on a misunderstanding of were actually forced to impose was
essential to return the
the role debt plays in the incredibly savage. Meanwhile, Ger-
many and other core economies
economy to a normal state
economy.
All this
— nevertheless magnify
You can see that misun- — which needed to spend more, to
the distress of the economy
at work every offset belt-tightening in the periph-
austerity derstanding
as a whole.”
time someone rails against ery — also tried to spend less. The
So how much progress
GH¿FLWV ZLWK VORJDQV OLNH result was to create an environment
has,
have we made in return-
“Stop stealing from our in which reducing debt ratios was
ing the economy to that
however, kids.” It sounds right, if you impossible: Real growth slowed to a
“normal state”? None at
don’t think about it: Fami- FUDZOLQÀDWLRQIHOOWRDOPRVWQRWKLQJ
only
all. You see, policymak-
lies who run up debts make DQGRXWULJKWGHÀDWLRQKDVWDNHQKROG
ers have been basing their
themselves poorer, so isn’t in the worst-hit nations.
made
Suffering voters put up with this
actions on a false view of
that true when we look at
policy
disaster for a remarkably long
what debt is all about, and
overall
national
debt?
things
their attempts to reduce
No, it isn’t. An indebted time, believing in the promises of the
the problem have actually
family owes money to oth- elite that they would soon see their
worse.
made it worse.
er people; the world econo- VDFUL¿FHVUHZDUGHG%XWDVWKHSDLQ
First, the facts: Last
my as a whole owes money went on and on, with no visible prog-
week, the McKinsey Global Institute to itself. And while it’s true that coun- ress, radicalization was inevitable.
issued a report titled “Debt and (Not tries can borrow from other countries, Anyone surprised by the left’s victo-
Much) Deleveraging,” which found, America has actually been borrowing ry in Greece, or the surge of anti-es-
basically, that no nation has reduced less from abroad since 2008 than it did tablishment forces in Spain, hasn’t
its ratio of total debt to GDP. House- EHIRUHDQG(XURSHLVDQHWOHQGHUWR been paying attention.
Nobody knows what happens
hold debt is down in some countries, the rest of the world.
especially in the United States. But
Because debt is money we owe to next, although bookmakers are now
it’s up in others, and even where ourselves, it does not directly make giving better than even odds that
WKHUH KDV EHHQ VLJQL¿FDQW SULYDWH the economy poorer (and paying it off Greece will exit the euro. Maybe the
deleveraging, government debt has doesn’t make us richer). True, debt damage would stop there, but I don’t
risen by more than private debt has FDQSRVHDWKUHDWWR¿QDQFLDOVWDELOLW\ believe it — a Greek exit is all too
fallen.
— but the situation is not improved if likely to threaten the whole curren-
You might think our failure to re- efforts to reduce debt end up pushing cy project. And if the euro does fail,
duce debt ratios shows that we aren’t WKH HFRQRP\ LQWR GHÀDWLRQ DQG GH- here’s what should be written on its
tombstone: “Died of a bad analogy.”
trying hard enough — that families and pression.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
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