Brian Williams Loses Lofty Spot on a Trustworthiness Scale

If Brian Williams’s future as the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” rests on his trustworthiness and ratings, new research delivered some sobering news on Monday.

Before Mr. Williams apologized for exaggerating an account of a forced helicopter landing during the Iraq war, he ranked as the 23rd-most-trusted person in the country — on par with Denzel Washington, Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts. On Monday, he ranked as No. 835.

That puts him on the same level as the actor Gene Hackman, the basketball player Russell Westbrook and Willie Robertson, who stars in A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” reality series, according to the Marketing Arm, a research firm whose celebrity index is closely watched by advertisers and media and marketing executives.

The new research came as NBC tried to decide whether Mr. Williams can continue as anchor and managing editor of its evening news broadcast. The network’s internal investigation into Mr. Williams was underway Monday, with NBC News reporters contacting other staff members who have worked with Mr. Williams as well as soldiers involved in the Iraq helicopter incident, according to people who have been contacted.

The crisis has reached to the highest level of NBCUniversal. Stephen B. Burke, its chief executive, held a meeting at his house this weekend to discuss the next steps. Among the options the network is likely to consider is whether Mr. Williams should apologize again and return to the air, whether he should be suspended or whether he should be pressured to resign, television industry executives said.

Mr. Williams, who on Saturday said that he would step aside for several days as “Nightly News” anchor, is distraught, according to people close to him, telling friends that if he could go door to door and apologize to each of his viewers he would do so.

NBC declined to make its executives or Mr. Williams available for an interview.

For NBC, the decision is about more than journalistic ethics. It is also about business. The news group is in fierce competition with rival networks for ratings that ultimately affect advertising spending. NBC generated $200 million in advertising sales for its evening news broadcast in 2013, compared with $170.6 million for ABC and $149.9 million for CBS, according to WPP’s Kantar Media. (That is the first full year for which the data is available.)

Current and former NBC News staff members find themselves in the same position as many viewers — unsure whether the allegations against Mr. Williams represent a storm that will sink him, or one he can weather. Many were surprised to find a well-liked and very successful anchor in such a crisis this quickly. Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, has come out in support of Mr. Williams, but other public statements of support have been sparse.

One former NBC staff member said that Mr. Williams has contacted some who have worked closely with him in the past to ask them to cooperate with NBC’s investigation. Like the others who spoke, the person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was still in progress.

That investigation has been moving quickly, according to two people contacted by NBC journalists who identified themselves as being from the network’s investigative unit.

The journalists, seeking information on the 2003 Iraq incident that Mr. Williams said he described inaccurately, were at pains to point out that they did not work for Mr. Williams, one of the people said in an interview on Monday. The journalists seemed to want to move quickly, the person said, and sent several messages imploring a response.

A person close to Mr. Williams said he knew that his initial apology did not go far enough in addressing the scandal. Crisis management executives agree.

The story involves the military, said Andrew D. Gilman, chief executive of the crisis communications group CommCore Consulting, and a war in which “a lot of people died, a lot of people came back permanently injured — and you’re making stuff up to make yourself look better?”

People hold anchors to a higher standard of honesty than politicians, Mr. Gilman said. “We trust them to moderate debates when we’re electing presidents,” he said. At this point, he said, it is an issue of trust in the broader brand — NBC News — and even a star like Mr. Williams is not bigger than the show, or the network.

The “NBC Nightly News” Facebook page has become something of a forum for viewers debating Mr. Williams’s future. Some were disparaging the anchor. Underneath a story about the astronaut Neil Armstrong, some had joked that Mr. Williams had also been on the moon — a version of the social media joke #BrianWilliamsMisremembers, which inserts him into various historical news events.

But another wrote, underneath a story about snowstorms in Boston, that she would “change networks if Brian Williams doesn’t come back! Why is this called a scandal?”

Matt Delzell, managing director of the Marketing Arm, owned by the advertising giant Omnicom, said that it would be particularly difficult for Mr. Williams to regain that trust compared with athletes like Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong, who faced similar reputation crises, because of the position Mr. Williams’s holds as a truth-teller.

“People at some point will forgive, people at some point will forget, but it may be harder to forgive and forget Brian Williams,” Mr. Delzell said.