Firestorm Over Brian Williams Not Being Under Fire

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

Paris Mayor Suing Fox News is a No-Go

Unlike Governor Jindal from yesterday’s article, Fox News did not double down on an obvious error. Fox actually apologized for the ‘no-go’ zone misinformation, but that is not enough for the mayor of Paris, who plans to sue Fox: Paris Mayor Plans to Sue Fox News for ‘No-Go’ Zone As the NYT article states, this lawsuit will go nowhere in the US due to the precedent of New York Times vs. Sullivan. But could the mayor sue in France? Presumably yes, thus putting Fox News parent company assets at risk within France and/or the EU. Perhaps this is why Fox News took the unusual move (for a media company) of repeatedly apologizing for the repeated errors. In any case, Fox has apologized for its errors, and it should end there. We should praise individuals, companies and organizations when they admit fault, and not sue them. Instead of suing Fox, perhaps the mayor should sue Governor Jindal? He’s liable to triple down at this point because it’s an unfortunate part of our human nature to refuse to admit when we are wrong.

Originally posted: http://www.mccarthyism.com/2015/20150121.htm