Brian Williams is going down hard

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

NBC's Tom Brokaw reportedly wants Brian Williams fired over fabricated Iraq helicopter story

"Longtime "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw reportedly wants his successor, Brian Williams, thrown out of the big chair after he admitted fabricating key portions of a story he repeatedly told about his reporting experience during the Iraq War in 2003. The New York Post, citing sources at the network, reported that Brokaw, 74, has been "making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report.""

...Yet, something tells me he will still vote for Hillary "sniper fire" Clinton in 2016. =)
But he does have a point, Williams should probably go - if not for the lie itself, then for the BS apology he subsequently gave.

Brian Williams Stepping Away From 'NBC Nightly News' Amid Scandal

NBC News President Deborah Turness has issued a statement to the staff saying that they are considering what "the next steps could be."

Now NBC has launched an investigation into not only his Iraqi "experiences", but also several other rather dramatic moments involving himself that he has told over the years. In any case, it will be interesting to see where this ends up. Brian's Katrina coverage was a big factor in lowering the Bush approval rating at that time and people might consider the possibility that he may have been lying there too. I mean, everything he ever said will now certainly be looked into, and I am thinking he will be gone in a month or two and be disgraced like his buddy Dan.

No surprise, this fiasco has become a feeding frenzy for the right wing as it gives them a long awaited opportunity to go after the hated NBC. Regardless of their considerable record of their own exaggerated stories, embellishments, or outright lies in the past, the usual suspects on the far-right have instantly jumped at the opportunity like hungry vultures. In the meantime though, I seriously doubt if their darlings like Limbaugh or O'Reilly had done something similar, they would be drooling for the career death penalty the way they are for Williams.

Here's a thought. Maybe Brian could now run for office? I mean he seems to possess all the story-forging skills required. Or conversely, FOX could hire him? I'm sure he would fit in perfectly - if only he could swallow all that anti-Obama vitriol. =)

I really liked the guy, but nothing beyond that. I'm sure many people are dreadfully disappointed in him, while others are like, "Meh, that's just journalism these days". I don't really care either way - the problem is rather the damage done to his credibility, not just with regard to his false claim, but his "apology" which was no better, claiming some sort of false memory, which frankly is rather lame from a journalist of this caliber. It calls into question everything else he claimed he experienced - like a floating body during Katrina and the dysentery he claims to have suffered as a result of ingesting some flood water. The problem is, unlike most politicians, whose job it is to exaggerate their own accomplishments while pimping for votes, Brian Williams is supposed to be a journalist. All a journalist has are his ethics and his credibility. He has now effectively lost both, and now his previous "exploits" that he has bragged about are going to be under extremely strict scrutiny. I now believe the same thing that made Williams shoot to the top, his ability to spin a spellbinding tale of his experience in current war zones and disaster areas, will be his downfall, since those tales can no longer be believed.

As for who should replace him, I could not possibly care less. I hear Katie Couric may take over if he leaves. May sill sound like a really bad tabloid rumor, but if it were true, this would be a bold choice.

Or the whole investigation and stepping aside thing could only be for PR's sake. He could be back in time, because NBC has too much invested in him. After all, he has recently signed a new contract until the end of the decade. He may very well be back, but that would be problematic for the network, because he will now be with zero credibility and with questionable ethics. If that is the option that NBC wants to gamble on, I wish them good luck. The whole debacle could turn out to be a tempest in a teacup.

And then, there's this.
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Ultimately, the impression that sticks out from the whole story is this. A talking head gets hammered for inaccurate or embellished statements. Some may assume that this is a sign that there is a tendency towards holding these people's feet to the fire at long last. But if we look more realistically, television spokesmen, often loosely called journalists, are mostly full of BS anyway - and if they are going to go after this guy, the question arises why should the others get a pass? Is it, perhaps, that the ones at the top are held to a higher standard than the rest? As much as I wish it were true, I do not think that the top networks are waking up and taking a firmer stance against this type of hyped up, home spun, spiced to taste reporting, or making efforts to quell the hyper-partisanship and often misleading, propaganda-styled reporting. It just doesn't seem likely. Because, as long as the bulk of the public is prepared to keep buying their respective preferred brand of snake-oil, it is only natural to keep selling it to them. After all, it has been that way ever since horses pulled wagons.

I think it all comes down to that grey area of what distinguishes a more acceptable embellishment from a full-blown lie, one which often causes damage. I suspect it is more likely that Williams had not been cooperating with the perception management arm of the MSM or whatever it is called, and they decided it was time to dispose of him because of that. Not because someone has suddenly started caring about the true purpose of journalism - you know, that one which was forgotten a long time ago.

Comments

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

"They are calling this the cleanest war in all of military history. They stress they’re fighting a regime and not the people, using smart bombs, not dumb, older munitions. But there have been and will be accidents." - Brian Williams.

Anyway, his fishing tall tale doesn't bother me near as much as stuff like, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman".

RE: Oh, how quickly we forget

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

That only bothered me because the penis placement police were given way too much attention/power.

When bill tried to kill bin laden, red team said he was wagging the dog to escape the lewinsky "scandal". You really cannot make that shit up.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

the penis placement police

LOL. The PPP. :-D

(frozen) RE: Oh, how quickly we forget

[404.livejournal.com]

It's a shame you don't bat an eye about how a married man in power used his position to get sexual favors from a 22 year old intern. Especially in the Oval Office.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Maureen Dowd had a interesting observation about the power of social media in a New York Times editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-anchors-aweigh.html?_r=0). Unfortunately, it's the new power broker, because that's where this bruhaha started.

Although the NBC anchor had repeated the Iraq war tall tale, ever more baroquely, for more than a decade, when he cited it on his Jan. 30 broadcast during a segment about going to a Rangers game with a retired, decorated soldier who had been on the ground that day when he landed, Williams got smacked down on Facebook. A crew member from a Chinook flying ahead of Williams, who was involved in the 2003 firefight, posted, “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.” Stars and Stripes ran with it, and, by Saturday, Williams announced that he was stepping down for several days.

Social media — the genre that helped make the TV evening news irrelevant by showing us that we don’t need someone to tell us every night what happened that day — was gutting the institution further.

And not everyone in the right wing media are rejoicing over Brian Williams stumble. Geraldo Rivera, has taken up for him. What I don’t want is people to pile on and destroy a man’s entire career for this one incident,” he said, referring back to “a line in the sand that I barely survived and had to apologize for a million times.” [Geraldo Rivera got into some hot water himself over some "coverage" issues]

“Why is it that the loudest voices condemning Brian Williams never served in combat, were never combat reporters?” he continued. “I think that all these people with Twitter accounts who are attacking this person from the safety of their mother’s basement should shut up and let the soldiers and the GIs deal with this.

If Brian Williams goes, I much rather see Lester Holt (the weekend anchor for NBC Nightly News) get the seat, because he's paid his dues, and he is a good journalist, as far as I can tell.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Curious observation, but its her turf, so I respect her opinion on that moreso.

“Why is it that the loudest voices condemning Brian Williams never served in combat, were never combat reporters?

I imagine that flying across Iraq in a convoy of helicopters and NOT landing at your intended destination because someone came under fire was pretty freaky on its own merit.

And the military asked him along, I guess the embedded reporter thing had weird effects. Brian was quite the loyalist cheerleader too. Hmm.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I didn't see him as a "loyalist cheerleader" at all. He was certainly no Bill O'Really; and Brian Williams / NBC News wasn't glossing over bad news, when the shit went south in Iraq.

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

Re: social media:

We would do well to remember that social media often isn't fact-checked before it is initially communicated.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yep. That's why I said unfortunately. Reddit really screwed up during the Boston marathon bombing, and it was all over the map with participants attempts to ID the bombing suspect(s). It made life horrible for the people they 'identified,' and it was nothing more than a glorified digital lynch mob.

Oh, how quickly we forget

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

As I have said before, while I was under heavy laser fire while on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan, people don’t want a dry account of the news. If they did, we would have stationary video cameras posted on the scene with no commentary.

If fake news stories required that the news reporter be fired, the Fox news room would be empty. Just think Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. People watch TV to be entertained. The nightly news is America’s bedtime story for a lot of people, especially elderly ones. NBC and Uncle Brian Williams isn’t the only person guilty of this. Anderson Cooper and CNN (http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/09/cnn-caught-faking-war-footage-time-syria/) are also guilty.

Try and remember that in 2003, CNN was the gold standard in war correspondence reporting. NBC and other news outlets were fighting for relevance against Bernard Shaw and CNN. Hillary Clinton was just off a failed Presidential campaign when she became Secretary of State and told her story. There is nothing like a good war story to revive attention to relevance.

Is this new? I doubt it. It’s just easier to track with competition and eyes everywhere on the web watching your every move.

Re: Oh, how quickly we forget

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

If fake news stories required that the news reporter be fired, the Fox news room would be empty. Just think Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity aren't news reporters. The problem is that Brian Williams, who is a news reporter, was the one doing the embellishing under the guise of reporting, and there are murmurings out there that NBC has already had to talk to him about this habit he's had.

Yes, journalism is problematic in a lot of ways. I think we all want a firm line between bias and fabrication, however.

RE: Re: Oh, how quickly we forget

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Yes, journalism is problematic in a lot of ways.

Yes. That’s what you get when you base it on a free market model.

Re: Re: Oh, how quickly we forget

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

If only more media was like RT...

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry if the post has failed to meet your particular standards for coherency.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I dunno, her point seems pretty straightforward: what we call journalism isn't, so whatever Brian Williams did wrong, failure to conform to what journalism should be wasn't one of the things he did do.

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

Journalistic integrity? He's a newsreader who relies on a teleprompter.

I feel like a bigger deal is being made of this than it merits. It almost seems like semantics, that it wasn't his helicopter that came under fire, but the helicopter in front of his. His helicopter didn't come under fire, but he was in a group of helicopters that did. It was really just random chance that it wasn't his helicopter that came under fire. The odds were the same.

My conspiracy theory about this is that he somehow pulled strings to get his daughter the Peter Pan role, and someone didn't like that. But that's for my tinfoil hat.

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

That's true. I guess my thought is that this isn't worth ending a career over. But others may disagree.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

My conspiracy theory about this is that he somehow pulled strings to get his daughter the Peter Pan role

Hehehe!

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

"his "apology"... was no better, claiming some sort of false memory, which frankly is rather lame from a journalist of this caliber."


I couldn't say whether Williams mdae up the story, merely misremembered it, or whether the truth is somewhere in-between. However, it's interesting that although public perception of memory holds it to be generally unimpeachable (which is why eye-witness testimony is given so much weight in court) scientists have recently been showing just how faulty and prone to error the human memory can be (which makes it all the more appalling that we often jail or execute people using it.)

In other words: Williams might be telling the truth about simply remembering it wrong. Human memory is a strange and fickle beast. We're loathe, as a society, to admit to this, however, because it means admitting to an almost post-modernist "perhaps nothing is real" sort of revelation, which is uncomfortable for most to consider.

---

Regardless of what the science says, though, the public's perception is what is most important here (in terms of consequences and future actions.) And if we want to point fingers, I'd single out a news cycle that has become profit-driven instead of truth-driven. We've replaced careful, measured reporting and analysis of facts with ratings-grabbing stunts and shouting matches by talking heads to fill a 24 hour void.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

The perils of being an embedded reporter are many and long lasting. He flew in a helicopter in Iraq, got shot at, landed against plan, I mean, its pretty freaky stuff, RPG or no RPG.

"Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War! Finally! Now, it might not necessarily be the first person you'd want held accountable on that list, but never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot at in a war we probably wouldn't have ended up in if the media had applied this level of certainty to the actual fucking war." - John Stewart