I want to believe Brian Williams. I am not trying to be sarcastic, I really do. But I don\’t know how I can.
As you may be aware, Mr. Williams, the anchor/managing director of NBC Nightly News since 2004, has claimed, for years – and as recently as last Friday – that during the 2003 invasion of Iraq he was on a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire and forced down.
The problem? He wasn\’t. His claim (here\’s where the belief issue comes in) is either a “false memory” – i.e. something he truly remembered as happening even though it did not – or an outright lie.
Excerpted from Travis J. Tritten\’s article for Stars & Stripes:
Theadmission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment\’sChinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Starsand Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or twoother Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williamsarrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter afterthe other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
“Iwould not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “Idon\’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflateone aircraft with another.”
Williamstold his Nightly News audience that the erroneous claim was part of a”bungled attempt” to thank soldiers who helped protect himin Iraq in 2003. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12years ago,” Williams said. “I want to apologize.”
Is Mr. Williams telling the truth? Did he unintentionally “conflate one aircraft with the other” – a sincere mistake? Or did he intentionally concoct a BS story to make himself look more impressive; maybe help to cop him the anchor spot he got the next year?
There, of course, is no way to know for sure. But it seems to me that – especially after the scandal of Hillary Clinton lying that she was shot at by snipers in Bosnia, while landing at Tuzla\’s air base during a 1996 trip there…which she admitted only after video of her landing surfaced which showed that no such thing happened – Williams would, at some point, have double-checked to be sure his memory was not playing tricks on him.
And, making his story look even worse, Daily Caller\’s Chuck Ross reminds us that “Williams told his tall tale of being shot down in a helicopter during the Iraq War in vivid detail on David Letterman\’s show in 2013.”
Do I want to believe Brian Williams. Yes I do – if for no other reason that I (and, I suspect, you) have personally had instances where photographs or video have made me realize I was remembering certain events inaccurately. It does happen.
But this is a tough one.
Hillary Clinton survived her lie about Bosnia, because media were then, as they are now, in love with her. It got a few days of serious coverage, and then went straight into the circular file.
I wonder if media – including competitive media over at CBS and ABC – will do the same for Brian Williams.
