Brian Williams tried to repair his sullied reputation with the public on Friday during his first interview since being removed as anchor of “Nightly News” on NBC, but crisis communications experts, critics and social media users said his efforts fell short of making a convincing argument.

Speaking with his NBC colleague Matt Lauer in a taped segment for the “Today” show, Mr. Williams blamed his ego for telling stories that were not true, and said his fabrications “came from clearly a bad place, a bad urge inside of me.” But he also spoke about getting things mixed up, and when pressed by Mr. Lauer about whether he had lied and should have admitted that he did, he said: “I know why people would see it that way. It is not what happened. What happened is a whole host of other sins.”

The qualifying, and the parsing of words, was problematic, and betrayed a lack of sincerity, said Mike Paul, president of Reputation Doctor, a crisis and reputation public relations firm in New York.