Williams was participating in a discussion in CNN’s place in the cable news world prompted by Keith Olbermann‘s attack on Campbell Brown earlier this week. The panel seemed to overwhelmingly agree with Olbermann that objective news as CNN interprets it has been replaced by new media and the network needed to innovate. Williams thought so, too, but, specifically, he pointed out Larry King as the biggest single example of how outdated the network had become:
“CNN was really innovative when it came around… CNN had America’
s attention at that juncture. Today, I think CNN is basically a snooze. I think you can twiddle your thumbs. It’s the same old same old same old every dang day and there’s nothing compelling about it. And when I saw this week for the… I guess, some anniversary of Larry King, they had President Obama interviewed by Larry King. I thought ‘Oh my God, what happened to Larry king?!’ This is really tragic– I’m not being mean-spirited… The guy looked like an anachronism sitting there at the interview. What was going on?”
Williams’ comments from this afternoon below: