From the anchor desk, Brian Williams weighs in on the matter of traveling anchors:

"A lot has been written and said about our jobs. Some have written forcefully and passionately that network anchors have no business putting themselves in positions that involve danger and risk. I would argue that it IS our business. All of us in these jobs, along with the great men and women who came before us, came to these jobs as reporters. It's our professional training. The "desk job" component of our work often happens by accident. We somewhat reluctantly understand that once we become anchors, we must rely on the reporting of our outstanding fleet of correspondents -- on the job, on location every single day -- to be experts on their beats and to provide context on a daily basis. But we still consider ourselves reporters, and we do a better job when we spend time out of the studio and in the world.

He concludes: "To that I would point out that in all the hours of television I've anchored from a television studio, I've never reported on anything that has happened in that room. All of the news is happening outside. Some of it far away, in dangerous places. We must continue to report the news, we must continue to take all proper precautions, and we must pray that Bob and Doug make a complete recovery. After all, they were just doing their jobs."