Journalist Lies About Iraq

NBC Journalists deceive themselves and others.
But not us!
Film at 11 on Fox News.

Oh yeah sure.

I feel a little compassion about these kind of things. We live in a time where every mistake and lie - large and small - can eventually be exposed by the power of the Internet. There are times I miss the good old black and white days when heroes were possible.
 
Augustine said:
If Brian Williams was flying at 100 knots minimum 30 minutes (low end of reported "following") behind the helicopter that got hit, then he was over 50 miles from the helicopter that actually took fire.
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If Brian Williams is in a helicopter going 100 knots 30 minutes behind another helicopter containing Geraldo Rivera travelling 110 knots, will he reach Al Capone's vault before or after a third helicopter containing Dan Rather travelling twice the distance at two-thirds the speed of Geraldo's helicopter but setting out 30 minutes before? And which will be more credible a journalist? Assume Tom Brokaw is below firing mortars with his friends from "the greatest generation", which brings each helicopter a 1 in 10 chance of being slowed by 25% for 10 minutes.
 
calebprime said:
I remember the car accidents, but I don't remember what color the cars were, because I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff. Nor do I remember when exactly they happened. I only remember the basic narrative. If I was reasonably perceptive and honest with myself at the time, and I haven't been interrogated or coached, that basic narrative is true.
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We have only your word for that. Elizabeth Loftus might disagree.
 
Augustine said:
If Brian Williams was flying at 100 knots minimum 30 minutes (low end of reported "following") behind the helicopter that got hit, then he was over 50 miles from the helicopter that actually took fire. This is the difference between being t-boned, seeing the car in front of you get t-boned, and driving past the scene of an accident where someone got t-boned an hour afterwards. Taking fire is not something that you forget - you may misremember who else was there, but not if you were. The Costanza defense won't work here.
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Not according to the pilot of the helicopter Williams was in.

Three copters were flying in formation. The front 1 took an rpg hit. All 3 took hits from small arms.

They all took evasive maneuvers. Williams's copter was the last to land after taking evasive action.


His story and the events as told by the pilot are not dramatically far apart. The one hit by the RPG did not crash. It's entirely possible that he though the RPG hit his copter, if he overheard the crew talking about the small arms fire they did take.
 
Puppycow said:
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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ierce-mockery-after-recanting-iraq-war-story/
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Puppycow said:
Man, this is just brutal. Fox News Howie Kurtz:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ied-about-his-copter-being-shot-down-in-iraq/



Whether he fabricated it or misremembered it, those are two different things.

How is saying he misremembered the same as "admitted fabricating"? He also uses the word "lie".
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Tsukasa Buddha said:
The apology seems perfectly reasonable to me.
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He started telling the story within a few months of the event. It's not something he misremembered a decade later, it's something he "misremembered" immediately after it happened and spent a decade presenting as truth. And people have been calling him on it for years.
 
Brainster said:
According to some sources, Williams didn't just start telling this story about an event that happened 12 years ago; he was talking about it shortly after it happened. Which means it's a trifle hard to chalk it up to fallible memory.
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theprestige said:
He started telling the story within a few months of the event. It's not something he misremembered a decade later, it's something he "misremembered" immediately after it happened and spent a decade presenting as truth. And people have been calling him on it for years.
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It looks like the story got a little more dramatic each time he retold it:

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7987439/brian-williams-iraq-apology-helicopter

How the story grew over time

Williams hasn't always told that version of the story. In a March 2003 report for NBC News, he said that he hadn't learned about the attack on the other helicopter until after his Chinook had landed. "On the ground, we learn the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky."

Over the years that followed, however, the story evolved to become more dramatic. In 2005, Williams told Tim Russert that "the helicopter in front of us was hit. A pickup truck stopped on the road, pulled a tarp back; a guy got up, fired an RPG, rocket-propelled grenade. These were farmers, or so they seemed. And it beautifully pierced the tail rotor of the Chinook in front of us." Williams didn't claim to have seen that happen, but he spoke in the vivid language of a firsthand account.

In a 2007 blog post, Williams told an even more detailed story of the attack on the helicopter:

"Not long after Wayne's warning, some men on the ground fired an RPG through the tail rotor of the chopper flying in front of ours. There was small arms fire. A chopper pilot took a bullet through the earlobe. All four choppers dropped their heavy loads and landed quickly and hard on the desert floor.​

Again, Williams didn't actually claim to have been in the helicopter that was hit. But he did describe the incident in a way that condensed the timeline, saying that "all four" choppers landed quickly and hard, without mentioning that the first three had landed long before his. (It is worth noting that Williams may not have known how far behind the other helicopters he was, given that he could not see them.) In other words, the story had evolved again, and in a way that placed Williams closer to the attack.

Then, in a 2008 blog post, Williams made the shift to actually claiming that his helicopter was fired upon:

The Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor, as all four of our low-flying Chinooks took fire. We were forced down and stayed down — for the better (or worse) part of 3 days and 2 nights.​
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Mike! said:
Imagine how this would be unfolding if he worked for FOX News...
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He would double down on his lies, and a whole slew of screaming co-workers would accuse everyone who criticized him of being un-American godless socialists?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Misremembered being in a helicopter that was shot down? riiiight.
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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.
 
Mike! said:
Imagine how this would be unfolding if he worked for FOX News...
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Are you saying that people are going easy on Williams? It seems to me like he's being raked over the coals.

I guess I know what you mean, but I suspect the result would be more or less the same. Some of the people who are screaming for Williams to be fired might be less vocal, and others more vocal depending on their politics. Personally, I just call em like I see em. Not trying to be partisan here.
 
Ziggurat said:
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.
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Would it make a difference if the soldiers also had different recollections about what happened that day, and some of them contradict each other?

Delusional isn't really quite the right word. Try and think of some lines from one of your favorite movies. Write them down then look them up and see how close your recollection is to what was really said. Or, the sequence of events, or whatever. If your recollection is not entirely accurate, does that make you "delusional"?

Here's something from a medical doctor and neurologist:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/did-williams-lie/#more-7585

Of course, I have no idea what was in Williams’ mind, what he remembered, and if on some level he knew he was embellishing his own story. What is clear, however, is that it is very possible Williams remembered the version of the story he has recently been telling.

Williams himself calls the incorrect details a “mistake,” and report that, ““I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.” Elsewhere he says that he spent the weekend thinking he was going crazy, but reviewing his own version of events from 12 years ago plainly tells a different story than his current memory.

While I can’t know what is in his mind, given what we know about memory it is reasonable to give Williams the benefit of the doubt. It is absolutely possible, even likely, that it is his memory that has shifted over the years, in a fashion consistent with memory research.

I might also argue that it would be extremely foolish for someone like Williams to knowingly lie about an event that is well documented (even by himself) and that can easily be fact-checked.
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Molinaro said:
Not according to the pilot of the helicopter Williams was in.

Three copters were flying in formation. The front 1 took an rpg hit. All 3 took hits from small arms.

They all took evasive maneuvers. Williams's copter was the last to land after taking evasive action.


His story and the events as told by the pilot are not dramatically far apart. The one hit by the RPG did not crash. It's entirely possible that he though the RPG hit his copter, if he overheard the crew talking about the small arms fire they did take.
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http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/06/media/stelter-iraq-pilots/index.html
The pilot now questions his memory. Of course, he flew a lot more missions and likely saw more fire over the course of being a Chinook pilot. You may misremember who was on your bird, you may misremember which time you took fire if you took a lot of it, but you don't get confused on taking fire if you never took it. Maybe we see a little investigative reporting on this (and other stories).
 
Absolutley!
Lets review his claim of seeing a body float by his hotel window in New Orleans during the floods and contacting dysentery.
 
Now another Brian Williams story is coming in for some attention:

“When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country,” Williams said in a 2006 interview.

And last year, in an interview with Tom Brokaw, the man he replaced in the anchor chair at NBC, Williams said:

“My week, two weeks there was not helped by the fact that I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery, our hotel was overrun with gangs, I was rescued in the stairwell of a five-star hotel in New Orleans by a young police officer. We are friends to this day. And uh, it just was uh, I look back at total agony.”

But the French Quarter, the original high ground of New Orleans, was not impacted by the floodwaters that overwhelmed the vast majority of the city.
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Looks like we have a serial Drama Queen.
 
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