Brian Williams endures social media backlash

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/08/nbc-brian-williams-social-media-backlash

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He may not have come under hostile fire in Iraq. But he has on social media.

Rocket-propelled lampoons and semi-automatic calls for resignation have been whizzing in relentlessly from all directions and landing squarely on the trench where Brian Williams is trying to keep his neatly-coiffed head down.

Related: NBC's Brian Williams takes himself off air amid Iraq and Katrina controversy

Under the hashtag on Twitter #BrianWilliamsMISremembers, the news anchor’s picture has now been raggedly inserted into images ranging from Christ’s Last Supper to a lifeboat rowing away from the sinking Titanic. Tweeters have him variously reporting live from the Berlin Wall, receiving the 10 Commandments and landing on the moon. One caption beneath a picture of Williams reads: “I was the first black president of the United States”. Another image fakes his signature on a picture of the Enola Gay bomber that nuked Hiroshima.

A little cut-out of Brian can now be seen squeezed between JFK and Jackie in the historic picture of the presidential limousine driving through Dallas moments before the president was assassinated. Other spoofs have him claiming to have met Abraham Lincoln and ridden on the bus with Rosa Parks.

Some have come to Williams’s defence on social media, with one comment describing him as a sacrificial lamb taking the fall for a more widely unreliable media. Others urged the public, and NBC, not to rush to judgment. But others afford no mercy.

His image has now been transposed onto the bridge of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise on Twitter and one caption has him starring in the Lord of the Rings.