As we discussed yesterday, Brian Williams is now officially out as anchor of NBC Nightly News. Lester Holt, who has been the temporary, substitute anchor for months, was officially named as Williams’ replacement, and Holt is now the first African-American man to anchor a network nightly newscast. Progress! Williams will be moving to MSNBC in some capacity, and he will still have something to do with news programming at NBC Universal. Williams issued a statement to Variety yesterday:

“I’m sorry. I said things that weren’t true. I let down my NBC colleagues and our viewers, and I’m determined to earn back their trust. I will greatly miss working with the team on ‘Nightly News,’ but I know the broadcast will be in excellent hands with Lester Holt as anchor. I will support him 100% as he has always supported me. I am grateful for the chance to return to covering the news. My new role will allow me to focus on important issues and events in our country and around the world, and I look forward to it.”

[From Variety]

Well, “I said things that weren’t true” is better than his first excuse, which was that he “misremembered.” NBC released a statement about their internal audit of Williams’ lies, and their summary judgment was that Williams “made a number of inaccurate statements about his own role and experiences covering events in the field” but those inaccurate statements mostly came on late-night shows like The Late Show, The Daily Show, The Tonight Show, etc. So… if you’re a so-called legitimate journalist telling lies on a variety show, it’s somehow not as bad.

Part of Brian’s public mea culpa was a sit-down, no-conditions interview with Matt Lauer. Part of the interview aired this morning on Today, and it will also be shown tonight on NBC. Williams again admits “I said things that weren’t true” (which is the kissing cousin of “Yo, I totally lied”). When Lauer asks Williams how he’s doing, Williams says: “It has been torture. Looking back, it has been absolutely necessary. I have discovered a lot of things. I have been listening to and watching what amounts to the black box recordings from my career. I’ve gone back through everything — basically 20 years of public utterances.” He says that he left his journalistic ethics at the door every night when he appeared on late shows and he became “sloppy.” Lauer actually presses Williams significantly on the whole issue of Williams’ Iraq story. Williams talks around the issue that he was blatantly lying to make himself look better and more heroic, but he does say that his lies were “ego-driven.” He also says “I own this…I am sorry and I will be different.”

Photos courtesy of WENN.