Simon, Stewart, Williams: The Amazing Week That Was for the Broadcast News Business

There is a truism in my business: Journalism is failing when journalists are the news. But it would be impossible to ignore the unlikely, the unprecedented, the remarkable week this has been for the broadcast news business.

Starting with the most recent, and most tragic: the violent death of veteran CBS correspondent Bob Simon, not on the battlefield, not at the hands of abductors, but in a car crash, in the back seat of a taxi in Manhattan.

Simon was among a special breed of journalist who seem indifferent to personal safety and consistently bring to bear deep talent and expertise that is greater even than their fearlessness. Dan Rather, whose own career as CBS news anchor ended badly, described Simon as "one of the few genuine 'scholar correspondents'." Other examples of this elite tribe include CNN's Christiane Amanpour and NBC's Richard Engel (who acquired Arabic and lost a marriage for his profession).

Simon's passing prompted CBS News to make the increasingly rare decision of cutting into prime time so anchor Scott Pelley could, quite appropriately, report his untimely demise. Pelley paid his fellow broadcaster high tribute for a medium which places so much value on atmospherics: "One of the great writers of a generation has passed."

Simon's death caps — I sincerely hope — a most extraordinary week.

But there also are — to steal a favorite TV news line — two other developing stories we are watching.

This week also saw the unprecedented suspension of NBC news anchor Brian Williams and the unexpected announcement by The Daily Show host Jon Stewart that he was stepping down this year. Both stories are notable in their own way. A network anchor has never been suspended. And the retirement of a stand-up comedian who insisted he was in the "fake news" business is being reported like the end of the Walter Cronkite era.

Even stranger: the Williams and Stewart stories are being twinned, as if these two very different practitioners were cut from the same cloth.

As I've argued, they are. It's a stretch for some to appreciate Stewart as a news person. But, as my colleague Katie Carroll has explained, he is a beacon to a generation who hates pander as much as it loves sarcasm, who sees that Stewart does a better job of calling out crooks and liars than most in the "real" news business — including some meek and weak practitioners in the news business.

Stewart's 2004 decimation of CNN talking heads Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on their own program was a milestone in broadcast journalism. I was at Reuters at the time, and the newsroom there was never silent. During those 14 minutes you could hear a pin drop.

Once you realize that the emperor has no clothes, it's hard to think of him majestically. That's the tectonic shift that Stewart began. It isn't a matter of whether this particular — or any — funnyman should be considered a journalist. It's that a comedian beat most at their own game. Stewart has forced a fundamental discussion on how news is done in ways even respected mainstream practitioners and academics have been unable or unwilling to do.

Maintaining the high moral ground for as long as Stewart has is more important than parlor games about whether he should replace Williams as NBC's anchor — or, more amusingly, whether Williams should succeed Stewart in The Daily Show chair.

But it does bring us back to Williams and what, by itself, would have been an enormous story. Any time there's trouble at the top in broadcast news it's a big deal. NBC has had only eight nightly news anchors in more than a half century. That's roughly the same as CBS, where Walter Cronkite held the chair alone for 20 years. ABC has had nearly two dozen, but 22 of those years were pure Peter Jennings.

Williams's suffering mounts: Days into his six months of exile his name has been expunged from the broadcast he anchored only last week, and from the network's social media accounts. It's when the handwriting is removed from the wall that you know you're finished.

So in this remarkable week we have a untimely death of one news personality, wounds that have placed another on life support, and the occasion to examine anew what journalism should be, with the passage of a third to a new chapter yet revealed. It's not often you get three earthquakes in rapid succession.

As these things go, the death of Simon, one of the business's best, will be overshadowed by the enduring headline value of Williams and Stewart. Williams surely would prefer not to be the story anymore. So would Stewart, for entirely different reasons. I can only imagine what he's thinking:

"Bob freaking Simon is killed — and they're still talking about me?!"

[Updated 2/13 to correct first name of CBS anchor Scott Pelley.]