Journalist Lies About Iraq

[Wolrab]

First off, he's not a journalist. Journalists go out and dig for information. He reads a teleprompter in front of a camera. He's essentially just a news presenter. If we were relying on Williams to break big scoops then it would be a minor concern. But we don't. We rely on him to make a dumb pun as a lead in to stories on cute puppies being rescued from storm drains.

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is an American journalist who is the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network, a position he assumed on December 2, 2004.[2] In 2005, NBC News was awarded the Peabody Award for its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina story, the award committee stating that Williams and the NBC staff displayed the "highest levels of journalistic excellence" in their reporting.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams


Having some trouble with reality?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Here's the kicker: it's not really any better if he's telling the truth in his apology. If his memory would really distort events to this degree, how the hell can viewers ever trust anything he says? Well, they can't. Whether he's a liar or just delusional doesn't really matter.

That is why we only trust people who refuse to accept that their memories are faulty and that when they contradict the historic record the historic record is to blame!

 

[ponderingturtle]

Sorry, but I have little compassion for a journalist who lies and misleads the public the way WIlliams has.

Yea it is the presidents job to lie about Iraq. Also former general secretaries of state. But hey no one ever thought Powel had credibility either.

 

[Ziggurat]

Was he shot at?

Unclear. The pilot who said so no longer trusts his own memory.

Did his helicopter eventually land again?

Seeing as how he's not currently flying in a helicopter, that's an inane question. All helicopters eventually land (provided they don't crash). The cause of landing, however, can be quite significant. There's a major difference between landing hours after an attack brought down a different helicopter in a different group of helicopters, and being in the helicopter that was essentially shot down. This isn't a difference you're going to innocently forget, like whether you left your car keys on the night stand or the kitchen counter. Nor is this a case of mixing up various real events, like thinking you were shot down on your third combat mission when it was really your fourth. This was a fabrication, made to puff up his perceived manliness. And it worked, so long as people believed him. But it wasn't an innocent mistake.

Did my uncle really single handedly clear our the largest spider hole in the Mekong Delta with nothing but a sharpened toothbrush?

I don't care about your uncle. Nobody listens to your uncle. People used to listen to Williams. They used to trust him. That trust was misplaced, and they will probably (and rightfully) stop listening to him.

 

[Travis]

[/color]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams


Having some trouble with reality?

Having some trouble with understanding what I wrote? That some random editor of wikipedia chooses a particular word does not make that word correct. If Brian Williams is a journalist than so is Bill O'Reilly.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...y-For-Lying-About-Combat-Duty?detail=facebook

Oh, snap! And, in terms of being consistent, I don't care about him doing that either.

I don't care about your uncle. Nobody listens to your uncle. People used to listen to Williams. They used to trust him. That trust was misplaced, and they will probably (and rightfully) stop listening to him.

The only people that will claim they have stopped listening to him were people that already ignored him because they hated him. EVERYONE ELSE is going "I just don't ******* care!"

Seriously. First Benghazi and now this. When are you conservatives going to learn your faux outrage fools no one?

 

[Ziggurat]

The only people that will claim they have stopped listening to him were people that already ignored him because they hated him. EVERYONE ELSE is going "I just don't ******* care!"

Sure, Travis, sure. Keep telling yourself that.

The truth is, he's a joke now, and a complete embarrassment to the network. Even those Taiwanese animators are making fun of him:

 

[angrysoba]

Here's a round-up of memes.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

So he said it was an RPG instead of small arms. I mean, really? That's a distinction we care about?

There is no distinction. Whether he was blatantly lying or just got a few details wrong is irrelevant. Even if he was telling the truth it doesn't matter. The narrative is that Williams lied, so we now we can't trust anything he says and he has to go.

We must be able to trust that everything the news media tells us is the Truth, without exception. Williams has violated that trust so he has to go. If he was allowed to stay on then not only would nobody believe anything he said, but we might start to wonder about everything else we see and hear on the news. We cannot allow that to happen.

If we can't rely on absolute accuracy and honesty in the news, how can we trust other authorities such as politicians and church ministers? Without unfailing trust in authority and the comfort of certain knowledge, many people will turn to lives of crime and debauchery. The result will be a breakdown of civilized society and the end of America as we know it. That is why Williams has to go.

 

[Manopolus]

I don't think he meant to lie. Human memories are just treacherous. What you remember a decade later may not be what actually happened.

I can attest first hand that it is quite possible to have memories of things that never even happened -- without being a complete nutbag in any other way. The easiest way this can happen is by remembering a vivid dream as if it were real... daydreams can work in this fashion as well.

I can quite easily conceive of a situation where Mr. Williams daydreamed about what must have happened during that crash or what might have happened if he had been there, and some part of that fantasy jumped over into his memory of what really happened years later.

It happens all the time, really... you just don't have the proof of it when it does unless these memories are discussed with others that are familiar with the details... or if you wrote the stuff down (in a journal or something) and go back to it later for the proof.

 

[LongFuzzy]

WOW. So there is a recent thread where a poster said his friend was picked up and tossed into a fire, and then pulled out. He was told that his memory has changed over time, and the traumatic event he remembers did not happen the way he remembers. Now Brian Wilson has what appears to be a similar memory lapse, and he is a total liar, cannot be trusted, should be fired, career ended...
I suppose if his story was supernatural, he could be forgiven.

 

[angrysoba]

Now Brian Wilson has what appears to be a similar memory lapse, and he is a total liar, cannot be trusted, should be fired, career ended...

He also used to claim to be the leader of the Beach Boys.

 

[ponderingturtle]

At least someone is finally being held accountable for lying about Iraq.

 

[maxpower1227]

At least someone is finally being held accountable for lying about Iraq.

Indeed

Maybe we should put Williams on trial in the Hague over this.

 

[Wolrab]

Having some trouble with understanding what I wrote? That some random editor of wikipedia chooses a particular word does not make that word correct. If Brian Williams is a journalist than so is Bill O'Reilly.

snip link
Oh, snap! And, in terms of being consistent, I don't care about him doing that either.
snip rant

O'Reilly hosts an opinion show (badly). Williams is a journalist, has been recognized as such, and anchors a national news program. People watch O'Reilly to confirm their biases or to let him aggravate them. People watch Williams to keep informed on current events and news.

Here is Williams REPORTING on high speed rails:
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/39428343#39428343

O'Reilly doesn't report, he decides the opinions of his followers.

 

[Ziggurat]

Williams is a journalist, has been recognized as such, and anchors a national news program.

Not anymore.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Having some trouble with understanding what I wrote? That some random editor of wikipedia chooses a particular word does not make that word correct. If Brian Williams is a journalist than so is Bill O'Reilly.

Do you even know what the job of a managing editor entails?

 

[BStrong]

In other news, fish live in water.

When I was a kid and at the family business (indoor range, firearm sales, gunsmithing) and encountered the first loudmouthed fake combat vet I remember encountering, outed and embarrassed by my uncle (Marine, Pacific WWII, Korea) and after the guy beat feet I asked him about it and how he felt about it.

He was his usual self - If Washington crossed the Delaware with 12 men in a row boat, 50,000 ******** said they were there with him.

I don't know what Brian Williams had in his head, but he's not the first person caught out, won 't be the last, and there's so many vids on youtube of some lowlife ******* caught wearing (a nutty person's idea of) a uniform that there are more phony vets out there than you can shake a stick at.

Even the ex-first lady stepped in it with her Bosnian sniper fire story.

 

[Oystein]

I'm in Europe and didn't know Williams before this scandal broke, so I can't have a well-rounded opinion on him.

But concidentally, I came across one video clip that shows he's never been shy to "dramatize" his story. Here he is looking at a piece of rubble from the World Trade Center catastrophe, and says it has been "exposed to temperatures as hot as the inner earth" (0:28 minutes). Followed by images of "printer paper which was exposed to so much heat it carbonized!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WWAnCd_6lg

Now perhaps he can be excused as others before him (star architect Bart Voorsanger, for example) have claimed that this peace had seen "steel molten", but the facts at hand are:
- Paper carbonizes at temperatures between perhaps 280 °C and 400 °C
- The inner earth is much hotter than 5000 °C
- Iron melts at over 1500 °C
- There is actually no evidence that any iron was molten.
- All evidence points to boring low-temp smouldering in oxygen-poor rubble conditions

So Williams is making stuff up out of utter ignorance. That's not researched journalism, that's drama, baby.

 

[steve s]

NBC news just announced that Williams has been suspended for six months.

Steve S

 

[mgidm86]

WOW. So there is a recent thread where a poster said his friend was picked up and tossed into a fire, and then pulled out. He was told that his memory has changed over time, and the traumatic event he remembers did not happen the way he remembers. Now Brian Wilson has what appears to be a similar memory lapse, and he is a total liar, cannot be trusted, should be fired, career ended...
I suppose if his story was supernatural, he could be forgiven.

This poster sounds as if he/she has mental problems. Good thing we aren't relying on them to report accurate information on TV. Sounds like Williams remembers an RPG that was never there at all, at least for him (see below).

I do not watch TV and had no clue who Williams was until the last few days.

From the above mentioned Wikipedia article (which backs up everything I have read on this story so far):

on January 30, 2015 Williams inaccurately recounted the incident, stating that it was the helicopter he was on that was "hit and crippled by enemy fire".[35] His story was soon criticized by Lance Reynolds, a flight engineer who was on board one of the three helicopters that had been attacked. Reynolds and other crew members said they were forced to make an emergency landing, and that it was a half hour to an hour later that Williams' Chinook helicopter arrived on the scene

....

Williams said in the interview, "... I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us, and it hit the chopper in front of us."[38] The statement varies with the recollections of crew on the helicopter that sustained RPG damage, that it was at least a half hour ahead of Williams' craft, making it impossible for him to "look down the tube" of the RPG that damaged the other helicopter.

Katrina:

It reported that in a 2005 television documentary Williams indicated he was not a witness to the suicide, stating, "We heard the story of a man killing himself, falling from the upper deck."[45] In a 2014 interview Williams said, "We watched, all of us watched, as one man committed suicide."

About gangs in the Ritz hotel, not too sure about this one:

Williams also said in 2014 that the Ritz had been "overrun with gangs."[48] Richard Rhodes, a Seattle resident staying at the Ritz-Carlton at about the same time as Williams, said Williams was exaggerating; he saw no “criminal gangs” at the hotel but states that "a kind of criminal element" had gotten inside.

...

Dr. Joseph Pulvirenti, one of the physicians who manned the makeshift medical clinic inside the Ritz, wrote an eyewitness account for the Baltimore Chronicle in 2005 in which he related that looters had broken into the hotel "on a number of occasions.
...

DeGersdorff said prior to the storm she had arranged for police officers to stay at the hotel and that at any given time there were "five or six officers" there. She said that “on more than one occasion,” the looters tried to get inside the hotel. At one point, they did “breach a door” but were “immediately” chased out. There were “maybe one or two of them,” she said

"Overrun" seems a bit exaggerated, but I could excuse him for that, maybe, depending on how important it was to the story and which of these accounts are true.

Dead body floating by:

Williams stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street.[40] He said, in a 2006 interview, that he looked out from his 8th floor hotel window and saw a dead body floating past the hotel.[40][43][44] The hotel general manager at the time, Myra DeGersdorff, recalled in 2015 that neither she nor her staff saw floating dead bodies at the Ritz.

This one could still be true.

The Iraq helicopter story sounds like a blatant lie, and is a big enough lie to discredit him, in my opinion. The suicide he supposedly witnessed, well it sounds like he's used to embellishing. The other stories, not so sure. This is one reason I don't watch TV news. No matter where you get your news you have to weed out these kinds of inaccuracies, or at least try. But TV news, to me, is a waste of time.

I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

To me, the bigger issue is that journalism is often so sensationalized anyway that I think many journalists sometimes forget where the difference between the spin and the truth is. The public wants the sensationalism , so they get the spin, and then they complain when the sort-of-dishonesty they expect turns out to be real dishonesty...

I actually believe that people expect the truth. If what you say is true then the quality of journalism needs to be improved. What some people may "expect" is what the TV journalism gives them...mediocre reporting.

NBC news isn't backing him up, they have suspended him. Sounds like this has become a partisan issue here in this thread and I'm not sure why. It isn't to me.