For a journalist credibility is everything. Without it what
you write, what you say, what you report lacks the critical ring of truth.
Credibility, or more accurately, the loss of it, is what has
happened to NBC News anchor Brian Williams in the wake of his false claim that in
2003 while in Iraq he had been in a helicopter hit by an RPG (rocket propelled
grenade).
In fact, as Williams himself now admits, that story is
simply not true.
He was never in a helicopter that was forced to make an
emergency landing because it was hit by an RPG. In fact, he arrived about an
hour after the choppers that had been hit by RPG's had already made their
emergency landings.
Williams apologized for the fabrication recently during
NBC's Nightly News broadcast:
"I made a mistake
in recalling the events of 12 years ago. I want to apologize." He
added that: “I have no desire to
fictionalize my experience and no need to dramatize events as they actually
happened. I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the
impact area — and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two,
and I apologize.”
 |
| NBC News Anchor Brian Williams |
Here's the problem with that statement. Anybody who has ever
been in war as a combatant or covered war as a correspondent, as I have, NEVER
forgets a near death experience--and that's what being hit by an RPG in a
helicopter then crash landing would definitely be.
I recall once lying flat in the bottom of a putrid ditch
during a mortar attack on a village in Vietnam's Tay Ninh province and thinking
for sure that the next shell was going to land on top of me.
"Don't worry," someone who was hunkered in the
ditch with me said, "you never hear the one that gets you."
That was little consolation at the time, but the experience
is still etched deeply in my memory bank.
That's why the "fog of memory" is simply not a
valid excuse. Williams insists he
conflated his inspection of the impact area of those damaged choppers
with "thinking" or "remembering" that he was aboard one of
the targeted helicopters.
Perhaps it was wishful thinking. After all, if you as an NBC
correspondent, can say you were almost killed covering war, in the sometimes flaky
and dodgy world of television journalism that goes a long way toward increasing
your on-air persona--not to mention an increase in salary.
Now it appears Williams fabricated another story while
covering Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans back in 2005. Williams claims to have
seen a dead body float past the window of the five-star hotel where he was
staying in the French Quarter.
"When you look out of your hotel room 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," he said in a
2006 interview. "I
beat that storm. I was there before it arrived. I rode it out with people who
later died in the Superdome."
The fact is there were no corpses floating through the
French Quarter because it is on higher ground and was, therefore, spared
the rising floodwaters that devastated other neighborhoods when the levees
broke.
An unlike the evacuees in the Superdome
in the days following the storm, Williams was ensconced in an NBC News RV compound
on Canal Street with food and drinks along with a bevy of producers and
military-trained security. He did not endure the mayhem that evacuees went
through overnight and days afterward.
The sad truth is that television news is seen today more as entertainment
and less as journalism--and its stars
not only must be protected, but relentlessly well-groomed.
Television journalists are often viewed the same way
Hollywood actors are viewed--superstars who earn substantial salaries. And regrettably,
like their Hollywood brethren, they sometimes have difficulty discerning fact
from fiction. As such, they sometimes write or present the news to fit their
perception of reality, rather than cover it impartially.
Like Williams they often have an inflated view of their own importance.
I am reminded of what English playwright Tom Stoppard had to
say about journalists like Williams:
"He's someone who
flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing
about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it."
No comments:
Post a Comment