On the November 10 NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams proudly told viewers that longtime anchor Tom Brokaw was among those to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Two weeks later on November 24, correspondent Andrea Mitchell narrated a full item in which Brokaw was elevated above the other recipients, included a long soundbite from President Obama: "On the night that the Berlin Wall fell, only one American network anchor was there reporting live. He reported on Watergate, snuck a camera into Tiananmen Square, sat down for the first one-on-one with Mikhail Gorbachev by an American TV reporter."