NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has come under fire from critics for claiming to be under fire in Iraq over 10 years ago when in reality he was never in harm’s way. His original report from the field was accurately reported, but over time his story became embellished into a tall tale with his chopper coming under serious enemy fire. There are a number of amazing things about this story and the brouhaha now surrounding it. First is that the story of making up a sotry took so long to come out in public. The military guys in the chopper with Williams left notes to the news media that the story being told by Williams was completely untrue, but the guys never got a call back. That’s just lazy journalism not following up a lead, disrespecting the guys in uniform for not being credible without even interviewing them, or simply protecting a fellow reporter. Take your pick, they’re all bad looks for the news media.
The second fascinating issue was Williams’s horrendous non-apology. He made the situation worse by not coming clean and just saying he embellished a good story into a great one by putting himself into the action environment first-hand. Of course, that’s a stupid thing to do, but at least understandable from the perspective of the human proclivity for self-aggrandizement in the public eye. Instead Williams said he conflated the two events over time: that is, within his mind, his location moved from the chopper that arrived with no damage and no combat to the one that arrived half an hour earlier with a significant combat engagement. It would seem either he is lying (knows what he is saying is false but is trying to come up with an excuse that he believes will absolve him), or he is quite delusional. Either one reflects poorly on a man sitting in the anchor chair with the ad slogan of “being the most trusted man in news.” Generally, I am against calling for someone’s head when they make a mistake and own up to it, but when you don’t come clean and just obfuscate further, then you lose my sympathies. Williams just doesn’t belong in the anchor chair any longer and should be reassigned to another duty within the NBC organization.
Originally posted: www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150206.htm
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