By Keegan Michael key. Because despite our differences we count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of the day. And we can count on fox news to terrify all white people sharia law is coming to cleveland we wont always see eye to eye. And cnn, thank you so much for the wall to wall ebola coverage. For two whole weeks we were one step away from the walking dead. And then you all got up and moved on the next day. That was awesome. And by the way, if you havent noticed, you dont have ebola obamas anger translator there. Well have more from washington and more from the dinner coming up but our top story is about the credibility of one of the countrys top news outletses. It really is important. There are new leaks about whether the suspended nbc news now anchor Brian Williams is ever coming back at all. At this point hes mostly the butt of jokes lets go back to cecile strong from last night. Nbc is here. You know even us at sn got criticized this year for making fun of isis. I think thats unfair. If anyone is guilty of taking isis too lightly its them. You know. Oh and what can i say about Brian Williams . Nothing, because i work for nbc. Take a look at who is laughing here Chuck Todd Andrea Mitchell but you see lester holt trying to keep a stras fate. She brought up the verboten topic again when mocking disgraced congressman aaron shock who resigned after charges he used taxpayer money to fund lavish trips. Were here at aaron shocks own sign daughter island. And after hunting the dinosaurs. Wait Brian Williams you werent there. What are you doing, you rascal . Yes thats that williams meme again joking about williams being in places where he wasnt. Williams was not in that room last night, but his new boss andy lack was. This week lack and the ceo of Nbc Universal steve burke were given a secret briefing about the almost threemonthlong internal investigation into Brian Williams alleged embellishments. You remember how he said he was in a helicopter hit by an rpg in iraq but was on a different chopper and how questions came up about the claim he received a souvenir from s. E. A. L. Team 6 and whether he really saw a dead body floating outside his hotel in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina katrina. All of those stories have been known but there are other ones as wul. The investigators have found at least ten instances of exaggerations or embellishments by williams. According to sources, this may not be over yet. Let me bring in Washington Post reporter paul farhi who broke some of this news yesterday. I had to have you here because you scooped me twice this week. Youve been all over this story. I want to know what you think the significance is about the fact this investigation is not over. We heard about this internal investigation back in february. Its been going on and on and on and nbc is indicating it still hasnt finished. Yeah i think they are looking for more but i would say substantially its over. The main stuff has come out, and they are aware of it. They have turned up a couple things that we who reported this back when williams was first suspended werent aware of. There was one incident in egypt that we werent aware of. So i think substantially its over but, you know, there is maybe a little bit more to come. They want to keep their options open get the full bill of particulars. Tell us about the Tahrir Square example. Right. Well Brian Williams went and covered the arab spring uprisings in Tahrir Square in egypt, in cairo, back in 2011 and and described seeing progovernment forces on horseback coming into the square to beat people with whips, and he says he made eye contact with the lead horseman in this brigade. Its unclear whether or not he actually was there to see what he said he saw. Theres doubt raised in this internal investigation within nbc whether he was actually truthful about that. So when your story came out on saturday these are the kind of Text Messages i received from meme at nbc. Is Brian Williams done . It sure sounds like the groundwork is being laid to push him out of nbc. Its awkward to talk about sourcing in situations like this but do you think that all of these leaks are part of an effort to lay the groundwork for him to leave . I do and i do believe that at least they are raising the temperature so that nbc, if its thinking about bringing him back will do so against a big barrage of bad pr. You know i dont know frankly whether hes coming back or not, but it is clear that he has plenty of enemies within nbc who would like to see him retired at this point. And thats what the toe tality of these leaks is really all about is poisoning the ground so that if nbc was thinking about it they will do so up against a very tall barrier to getting him back in the anchor chair. The flip side to that is last week here on the program i had michael wolf on who said he was sure brian would be on and three fans of Brian Williams on who said theyd probably turn the channel to abc if Brian Williams never returns to the anchor chair. It does sort of feel like a lose lose situation no matter what nbc does. Yes, although i think theres something very important here. I think viewers and advertisers are going to have a much bigger vote in this than people like you or i. They will do lots of focus group research. They will find out if viewers are prepared to watch nbc again, and thats going to be the more telling question not these leaks, not the internal reports, not anything but that. Television is a business no surprise there. Theyve got to do the research to tell them whether they have an ongoing business or not. And amid all this mounting speculation, i have a source trying to pop the balloon and say the announcement is not imminent. I was told this morning still weeks away from a decision and from an announcement about Brian Williams. What does that indicate here paul . Because the upfronts, the advertising upfronts are these annual events where Networks Like nbc promote their new shows and talk to advertisers and get big commitments from advertisers. Its coming up on may 11th for nbc. If nbc doesnt make any announcement about Brian Williams until after the upfront, does it indicate something about the process . Well it puts them in limbo. On may 11th they will go in front of their advertisers and say here is news now and here is our plan for nightly news and they dont have a plan. They dont have an anchor. And theyre going to expect advertisers to commit millions and millions of dollars without knowing who is going to be sitting in that anchor chair and anchors are very important to advertisers. They need to know who is going to be the person around which you build and promote the news and if they dont have assurances about who thats going to be some of them are going to withhold their advertising commitments because its going to affect the readings its going to affect the investment by the advertisers in the program. So i am surprised by the reports that they will wait five weeks. I think the pressure is on them actually to come up with a decision by may 11th when they meet with advertisers. And so perhaps if theyre going to wait until after the upfront, theyre trying to lower the temperature. You said certainly the temperature has been rising inside nbc. Maybe theyre trying to take a little bit of the pressure away here but this is really an unbearable situation. Lets remind viewers, Brian Williams hasnt been allowed to defend himself, hasnt been allowed to speak by nbc. He hasnt been allowed to do anything in public. As a result we dont have his side of the story. Paul thanks for being here this morning. Thank you. Later well have dan rather des moines me currently stuck in legendary new york traffic, but he will be here to weigh in on the williams situation. Well turn to the biggest media hype of the year. I would say its exceeded expectations. America reacting to Diane Sawyers historic interview with bruce gender excuse me bruce jenner. We will talk about his gender transition with two expert guests right after this quick break. Its more than a network and the cloud. Its reliable uptime. And multilayered security. Its how you stay connected to each other and to your customers. 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So tell your doctor about all the medicines you take. Before taking myrbetriq, tell your doctor if you have liver or kidney problems. Common side effects include increased blood pressure, common cold symptoms, urinary tract infection, and headache. Take charge by talking to your doctor about your oab symptoms and myrbetriq. Find out if you can get your first prescription at no cost by visiting myrbetriq. Com welcome back. You know this next story is really an example of the medias power to change hearts and minds. 17 Million People watched bruce jenner tell diane sawyer he has lived a lie as decades, hes lived as a man but with the soul of a woman. It was the culmination of months of planning and producing. Well peel the curtain back but first let me put the ratings into perspective. Abc usually has 7 Million Viewers on friday nights not 17 million. This was abcs highest rated friday episode of 20 20 since the year 2000. But do the ratings translate to acceptance or Something Else . In the weeks leading off jenner was often a punch line or punching bag. The tabloids had a field day, one of them dressed him up in lipstick and suggested he was on suicide watch. Jenner revealed he did once think about suicide. In this clip he tells sawyer about being stalked by the press. A year and a half ago he made a doctors appointment to get a tracheal shave, reduce the size of his adams apple. Someone leaked the appointment, cameras were waiting. That night i thought, oh its like over. And i was in this walking up and down this hall right here back and forth, back and forth all night long heart is pounding. And i thought wouldnt the easiest thing to be right now and i could see where people get to that is go in the room got a gun, boom you know. Pain is over its done. You know go to a better place. And i thought, i cant do Something Like that. I mean i want to know how this story ends. Lets talk about the medias treatment of this story and what the high ratings really mean with sara kate ellis, the ceo of g. L. A. D. D. Thank you for being here this morning. Thanks for having me. Tell me a little bit about the preparation for this because i think you were a part of it. You knew for months that this announcement was likely going to be made. I think anytime theres a big story that affects the lgbt communities we are definitely heavily involved in whats going on and i think for this particular story, you know, diane dauier an iersawyer and the team at abc were treating this very well. There was a lot of speculation this was going to be exploitative. I was struck by how educational it was. It wasnt exploitative. They didnt wait until hour two to reveal the big news. They revealed it in the first two minutes. And they used to platform to expand hearts and minds, to educate people. For first time a lot of those 17 Million Viewers you were talking about were meeting someone who is transgender. So they used this opportunity to educate about what transgender means, how at risk the community is. So i thought it was really well done. Groups like yours essentially knew this was coming might have been in touch with the jenner family and had to prepare statements ahead of time because of the monumental nature of this . We like to be ahead of any kind of breaking story thats why your statement came out about five minutes into the show. Well, you know we had been thinking about this a long time. We had been watching the coverage the poor coverage in the press of bruce. You were discouraging people like me from speculating ahead of time. Yes. We dont do it for people who are gay and we shouldnt do it for people who are transgender. Its disrespectful. You mean to out them before they choose to talk about it. Yes exactly, thank you. What about the choices been the media world about saying he versus she. Its a difficult one. In the interview he indicated he wants to be referred to with the pronoun he. What is the right choice for journalists . The way we should follow is follow the lead. So bruce is our leader here and its up to him to decide. Right now he would like male pronouns and to be referred to as bruce. Hes also going through a very delicate transition right now and hes doing it very publicly and i think he really is genuinely doing it to make the world a better place so we should be very respect 68 of that. The next step is a documentary series on e . Bet me bring in Christina Carl a baseball writer. I had you on the program here last year. We talked about transgender issues because youre an activist as well as a writer in espn and you wrout that jenners stage was really unprecedented in the transgender community. Tell me what your takeaway from fridays special was. Well my takeaway was that it was extraordinarily well done and i think covered a wide variety of issues and so as an introduction to a mainstream audience to a lot of ideas and a lot of experiences that they dont have a lot of familiarity with i thought it was perfect. Now, that said it affords us the opportunity for a larger conversation with trans issues and transness. Hopefully that will lead to positive change particularly in areas of Public Policy and areas of discreme against trans people and lake life better for all trans people and not just better for bruce jennings. Do you think its true that high ratings may lead to better acceptance or were some people tuning in to see this man and whether he would look more like a woman . You know again, appearances are like pretty superficial. I think like again, this is just an extraordinary moment in media history and in the history of popular culture. Tell me why you say that. What makes it extraordinary . Well i think just because, you know one, the number of people who checked it out, and i think thats something that kind of like is building on like, you know i think a changing zeitgeist on the nature of, you know acceptance in transpeople and the fact that were achieving greater and greater visibility in mainstream society, not just in the spaces that have been afforded to news the past. So as a result, you know like i thinking about able to talk about trans people in America Today in a way that goes beyond maybe thats the power of celebrity culture and being used to a positive purpose, but its also something that i think because we know about bruce jenner through sports that really this is an opportunity to let us talk about things we have in common and in common with trans people like sports. This may not be the best analogy but when George Clooney goes to sudan, reporters follow and they speak more about sudan. Youre saying celebrity culture in this case may have a similar result. Well i definitely think this is Something Like im sorry. I was just going to say also when we talk about go ahead, sara. Jean when you look. When we look at harvey levin at tmz when he spent out a tweet apologizing for his past coverage and saying he would be way more sensitive and he has a deeper understanding of what the tabloid press has been awfully restrained in the last 36 hours, you dont you think . Very very. And i think thats very good. Thats showing a changing culture. Thats showing acceptance growing. People dont want to make a misstep. Youre dealing with somebodys somebody a person and you met that person on friday night or you knew that person and they reemerged on friday night and that has a profound effect on people. Christina, let me give you the last word in this conversation. I want to ask you about the idea that i have heard all weekend on facebook and online and even in person, some people saying i just dont want to hear this. Bruce jenner should do whatever bruce jenner wants to do but i dont want to hear it. Some call it intolerance. I wonder if you have heard it and what your reaction to say that