Brian Williams admits he lied about being shot down in a helicopter over Iraq

[rogue06]

Nah, happens all the time. What, never happened to you before?

Jessica Alba. But I would like to say she did.

[rogue06]

It appears that the man who Williams replaced, Tom Brokaw, is calling for Mr. "Misrembered" to resign or be fired and suspected the story was bunk all along. NBC News President Deborah Turness announced that executives at the network are investigating and will reveal their findings once completed. If they're hoping to delay until this all blows over then they might be mistaken as the story continues to grow although some think that his bosses at NBC are "hanging him out to dry".

And now some of Williams other stories that he covered are coming under scrutiny such as his claim that he saw a body float by in the French Quarter during Hurricane Katrina since that area of New Orleans received very little flooding, and even his account of saving a puppy from a burning building back when he was a volunteer fireman is being called into question.

All of this has led some to bandy about names of a likely replacement for Williams. Although as political commentator and humorist Andy Levy quipped, "Brian Williams will be fine. If he can survive being hit by an R.P.G., he can survive this."

[Zymologist]

It appears that the man who Williams replaced, Tom Brokaw, is calling for Mr. "Misrembered" to resign or be fired and suspected the story was bunk all along. NBC News President Deborah Turness announced that executives at the network are investigating and will reveal their findings once completed. If they're hoping to delay until this all blows over then they might be mistaken as the story continues to grow although some think that his bosses at NBC are "hanging him out to dry".

And now some of Williams other stories that he covered are coming under scrutiny such as his claim that he saw a body float by in the French Quarter during Hurricane Katrina since that area of New Orleans received very little flooding, and even his account of saving a puppy from a burning building back when he was a volunteer fireman is being called into question.

All of this has led some to bandy about names of a likely replacement for Williams. Although as political commentator and humorist Andy Levy quipped, "Brian Williams will be fine. If he can survive being hit by an R.P.G., he can survive this."

He's a liberal journalist. He'll be fine.

But that last line....

[rogue06]

He's a liberal journalist. He'll be fine.

But that last line....

Possibly but even liberals in the media are blasting him.

As noted his predecessor Tom Brokaw has called for him to resign or be fired.

Baltimore Sun’s media critic, David Zurawik said on CNN that Williams and NBC has insulted "millions of military families in this country who suffer everyday diminished lives by the injuries and the wounds that people who fought honorably in those wars suffered." He also noted that "if credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday."

Rem Reider of USA Today declared that "it’s hard to see how Williams gets past this, and how he survives as the face of NBC News."

NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik has said that Williams has lost all credibility he had as a journalist stating that, "His dependability — the trust built up over years with millions of viewers — has been cast in doubt due to a self-inflicted journalistic war wound over a story nearly a dozen years old."

CNN's Erin Burnett made it clear that she isn't buying Williams claim of making a mistake or "misrembered" and said straight-out that he "lied about being on a U.S. military plane that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the Iraq war."

Even psycho-liberal Rosie O'Donnell has mocked Williams remarking that "I think you would know if you were in a helicopter that was actually hit by a missile."





Meanwhile, Rich Krell, the pilot who has provided some support for Williams account by saying that they did come under small arms fire at some point during their flight (although weren't hit by an RPG resulting in a forced landing as Williams claimed) is now recanting his story especially after other pilots came forth and said Krell was not even the pilot of the helicopter that Williams was on.

And aside from claiming to have seen a body floating in an unflooded portion of New Orleans after Katrina, another of Williams claims at the time -- that he was in a five-star hotel "overrun with gangs" and had to be "rescued from the stairwell" by police is also coming under fire [no pun intended] since there is nothing to validate such an attack or rescue and the hotel in question was actually being used as a police staging area at the time. Even the most drug-addled gangbangers are unlikely to attack a hotel swarming with cops.

[Jedidiah]

I don't want him to stop being an anchor. Who else's newscasts will Jimmy Fallon mash up into rap songs?

Who is Jimmy Fallon?

[Sparko]

Possibly but even liberals in the media are blasting him.

As noted his predecessor Tom Brokaw has called for him to resign or be fired.

Baltimore Sun’s media critic, David Zurawik said on CNN that Williams and NBC has insulted "millions of military families in this country who suffer everyday diminished lives by the injuries and the wounds that people who fought honorably in those wars suffered." He also noted that "if credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday."

Rem Reider of USA Today declared that "it’s hard to see how Williams gets past this, and how he survives as the face of NBC News."

NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik has said that Williams has lost all credibility he had as a journalist stating that, "His dependability — the trust built up over years with millions of viewers — has been cast in doubt due to a self-inflicted journalistic war wound over a story nearly a dozen years old."

CNN's Erin Burnett made it clear that she isn't buying Williams claim of making a mistake or "misrembered" and said straight-out that he "lied about being on a U.S. military plane that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the Iraq war."

Even psycho-liberal Rosie O'Donnell has mocked Williams remarking that "I think you would know if you were in a helicopter that was actually hit by a missile."





Meanwhile, Rich Krell, the pilot who has provided some support for Williams account by saying that they did come under small arms fire at some point during their flight (although weren't hit by an RPG resulting in a forced landing as Williams claimed) is now recanting his story especially after other pilots came forth and said Krell was not even the pilot of the helicopter that Williams was on.

And aside from claiming to have seen a body floating in an unflooded portion of New Orleans after Katrina, another of Williams claims at the time -- that he was in a five-star hotel "overrun with gangs" and had to be "rescued from the stairwell" by police is also coming under fire [no pun intended] since there is nothing to validate such an attack or rescue and the hotel in question was actually being used as a police staging area at the time. Even the most drug-addled gangbangers are unlikely to attack a hotel swarming with cops.

In that video you linked to earlier, Williams says he spent Katrina in the Superbowl. No mention of a hotel. And in that video he made the claim that the helicopter in front of his was shot down (which wasn't true either)


Maybe he just has Alzheimer's?

More likely he is a narcissist who likes to inject himself into his stories, and play the hero. He is supposed to report the news, not be the news.

[rogue06]

Williams has announced that he is taking a temporary leave of absence.

[rogue06]

In that video you linked to earlier, Williams says he spent Katrina in the Superbowl. No mention of a hotel. And in that video he made the claim that the helicopter in front of his was shot down (which wasn't true either)

Source: NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments about dead bodies, Hurricane Katrina starting to gain attention, draw scrutiny

The online feeding frenzy quickly turned to the 55-year-old anchor’s signature assignment: covering Katrina from before it made landfall, when he spent the night of the storm with refuge-seekers in the Superdome and then reported on the harrowing days that followed.

“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.”

Source

© Copyright Original Source

USAToday also mentions it

More likely he is a narcissist who likes to inject himself into his stories, and play the hero. He is supposed to report the news, not be the news.

That became a trend in interviews and the like several decades ago. Instead of just reporting what someone said you also include your own experiences with them. It has mushroomed since then

[Cow Poke]

And to think I had such respect for NBC journalism.

Don't forget - NBC is the honorable network who gave us the rigged "exploding GMC Truck" report in 1993. They totally RIGGED that one, and called it investigative reporting.

Following a tip, GM hired detectives, searched 22 junkyards for 18 hours, and found evidence to debunk almost every aspect of the crash sequence. Last week, in a devastating press conference, GM showed that the conflagration was rigged, its causes misattributed, its severity overstated and other facts distorted. Two crucial errors: NBC said the truck's gas tank had ruptured, yet an X ray showed it hadn't; NBC consultants set off explosive miniature rockets beneath the truck split seconds before the crash -- yet no one told the viewers.

[Juvenal]

I can see a good deal of schadenfreude from the FOX crowd around here on this Williams pratfall, but seriously, this is not good news, or even news, unfortunately. The reaction here is consistent with my long-time observation that no one ever defends FOX; at best the claim is they're just as bad as everyone else, which is in no sense an endorsement.

Here is Maureen Dowd from the NYTimes.

Anchors Aweigh

THIS was a bomb that had been ticking for a while.

NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division.

But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and “there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top,” as one NBC News reporter put it.

The guy is, or perhaps was is more apt by now, his own managing editor.

That's not how journalism works.

My junior high journalism teacher wouldn't give that pass. It's not something that would even pass muster at my college rag. I ran the thing, and even then my own stories had to be approved by our news editor, and fact checked by staff. That was required by our publisher, who cut her teeth at Chicago's City News Bureau, birthplace of the motto, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

CNB folded in 1998.

Broadcast news has long since stopped doing journalism, with the lone exception of the Newshour on PBS, which, unfortunately, is now also in decline from the days of McNeil/Lehrer. When Gwen Ifill is allowed to anchor and do opinion work, the basic standards of objective journalism have been breached.

Television networks originally provided news content to satisfy FCC requirements for community service as compensation for their free use of public airwaves. The requirements are still there, but now children's cartoon programming is massaged to fit the bill by including "educational" content. I filed those reports myself during my time with Telemundo. Freed from service requirements, nightly news has morphed into a profit center under the guideline, "The news must pay for itself," despite the lack of any link between reliable information and profit. Anchors, who at one time moved up to network based on their reporting, are now promoted based on their Q scores.

It's increasingly difficult to access reliable news coverage. Media consolidation has resulted in entertainment networks owning the networks — Mickey Mouse owns ABC — and so, now, we get this:

As the performers — Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Bill Maher — were doing more serious stuff, the supposedly serious guys were doing more performing. The anchors pack their Hermès ties and tight T-shirts and fly off to hot spots for the performance aspect, because the exotic and dangerous backdrops confer the romance of Hemingway covering the Spanish Civil War.

Straight news can't compete in this marketplace. I watched as the Chicago Tribune, where Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reporters were as common as Nobel laureates at the University of Chicago, became a shadow of its former self under Maxwell, slayer of great newspapers. You can still find those investigative pieces in the archives, but it's never recovered. Even the New York Times has retreated behind a paywall.

The problem is that independent of its profitability, we need straight news. Without an informed population, democracy can't work.

As ever, Jesse

Oh, and just by the by, Brokaw denied those reports. Unnamed sources shouldn't be weighted higher than his first-person account.

[rogue06]

One of these days I need to pull the curtain away and show you that your precious New York Times that you seem to admire so much that it darn near approaches worship has warts and blemishes just like the other news services.

[Zymologist]

One of these days I need to pull the curtain away and show you that your precious New York Times that you seem to admire so much that it darn near approaches worship has warts and blemishes just like the other news services.

Unless you can source this from the New York Times, I won't believe it.

[Cow Poke]

Unless you can source this from the New York Times, I won't believe it.

yeah!

[Juvenal]

One of these days I need to pull the curtain away and show you that your precious New York Times that you seem to admire so much that it darn near approaches worship has warts and blemishes just like the other news services.

When folks like you or CP go so far off the rails in your responses that it's a waste of time to respond, I don't.


But just this once ...

I have no interest at all in yet another example of your cherry picking news to suit your ideology, and even less interest in watching you set up and burn a strawman. Seen more than enough of both of those from you today. The New York Times is not perfect, and if you think you're likely to open my eyes on that, you're not paying attention. I've never suggested otherwise. The convenience of that assumption is no substitute for fact.

It's merely the best there is in its class. That much I'll defend. That's why I rely on it, and if you want to bust my chops for doing so, you need to show me something better. If you can't do that, don't bother trying anything else, because nothing else has relevance. I go with the best available information; it minimizes the embarrassment of getting it wrong.

It's not as if I didn't call this one.

No one ever defends FOX; at best the claim is they're just as bad as everyone else, which is in no sense an endorsement.

And even that claim doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I don't pay any attention to fringe news, and FOX still managed to ping the radar last week. Birmingham, UK, has been taken over by muslims? Paris is pock-marked with sharia-fueled no-go zones for the police? Do you really think you're going to find something worse than that anywhere else?

I don't think so.

Try something different this time. Find a better news source. Surprise me.

[Cow Poke]

When folks like you or CP

I love you, Jesse.