Newsman Brian Williams was unfairly suspended

February 11, 2015 • 10:20 am

NBC News’s evening anchorman, Brian Williams, has been suspended without pay for 6 months. The punishment comes for embroidering his experiences in the Iraq war. I was watching NBC news when he recounted the incident that led to his suspension: he said that he had flown into Iraq in a helicopter that was hit and forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade. It turns out that his helicopter was not in fact hit, but the one in front of him was. He told this false story several times over the last couple of years.

It’s not clear what effect this will have on his career. NBC emphasized the damage to the “trust” that the news division had acquired, and, after 6 months, during which Williams will be replaced by someone else, he may not regain his chair. This “scandal” may well follow him around for the rest of his life.

Williams was excoriated by the media for supposedly exaggerating his experience, the implication being that he was trying to portray himself as being in more danger than he really was.  But his punishment is unfair, and for several reasons.

First, how do we know that he was deliberately lying about what happened, rather than that he simply forgot? After all, the incident happened 12 years ago, and psychologists tell us that we can indeed construct false memories about such incidents—and believe them to be true. 

Remember in 2008 when Hillary Clinton said that she came under fire in Bosnia at an airport? That was just as false as (and similar to) Williams’s misstep. But she suffered very little for that. Now you can argue that Williams is a newsperson, and he simply cannot say stuff that’s wrong. But remember too that Hillary Clinton was running for President. Do we hold potential Presidents to a lower standard of credibility than we do news anchors?

Second, there’s the issue of trust. I’ve watched Williams ever since he replaced Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer. I still trust Williams. Do I think he’d lie about stuff in the news that didn’t involve his personal experiences? No. Do I think he even lied about the Iraq incident? I dont know, because false memories, as Elizabeth Loftus tells us, are common. The “damaging trust in NBC” issue is a canard. If Williams had had a long history of falsifying other matters (the Katrina episode has not been substantiated), that would be a different issue. This is a one-off thing. It is not like the repeated falsehoods of journalists like Jonah Lehrer (who, by the way, appears to have landed on his feet).

Finally, what has come to our society when we demand someone’s head on a plate when they make one error or tell one falsehood? Who among us has not done that? The entire G. W. Bush administration lied through its teeth, and we do nothing about that.

A six-month suspension of Williams without pay, and possible ruination of his career, is simply too harsh a punishment—and remember that many people even called for his firing. Have we abandoned the concept of forgiveness in these times? When someone apologizes, can’t we accept the apology, let them continue on, and perhaps be a bit wary for a while? It’s likely, after all, that after this incident Williams will be extremely careful about always telling the truth.

Something has happened to Americans to make them harsh and unforgiving, and I’m not sure what it is.

UPDATE: Let me clarify that I agree that he should have been sanctioned, and perhaps suspended for a few weeks, but 6 months (and with the possible ending of his tenure at NBC after that) seems too harsh to me.

 

139 thoughts on “Newsman Brian Williams was unfairly suspended”

  2. 1. Just because everybody lies doesn’t mean nobody shouldn’t. Especially journalists.

    2. If you look at the NBC brass’ statements, they refer to multiple episodes of Williams misleading, exaggeration, inaccuracy, etc.

    3. Pro tip: If every single one of your “memory lapses” is in favor of making you look more heroic, they are probably not lapses but intentional attempts to inflate your reputation. Not something a journalist should be doing.

    4. Hillary lost that race, if you remember.

    1. Hillary didn’t lose because of her exaggeration. And I didn’t say Williams shouldn’t be disciplined; I just think the punishment was too harsh. Finally, I don’t appreciate the snark of “pro tip”. Could you please try to be more civil here?

    2. A memory lapse is not the same as a false memory, and neither are evidence of conscious intent. In fact, the contrary is more likely the case.

      1. The literature of the courts are ful – full, I tell you! – of cases of both accused parties AND non-culpable witnesses “constructing naratives” (oops, internal and external spelling chockers seem to have crashed) in response to all sorts of pressure, of which the actual events are not the most important part. That has been so well established that to not accept it as true is, in the words of some philosopher, “perverse”.
        This doesn’t fit in with some people’s political agendas, but that doesn’t make it any the less true. I suspect (but I’m not a historian of jurisprudence, so feel free to apply the salt cellar to that) that is it sone part of the rise of forensic evidence over eyewitness evidence.
        I heard a discussion recently – I think on a Radio4Extra compilation of TED lectures – that proposed that widespread literacy (let alone email and every second minuute of your day being video recorded) is an evolutionarily recent event, and that the human mental habits (including lying, “experience embroidery” and Deepakittyturds) are only slowly catching up with the idea that we’re no longer in a culture of oral-only communication.
        False memory is a day-to-day fact. On the rig, I share an office with the safety officer and often a cranework teacher. When they’re carrying out investigations into “events” (near misses, thankfully. So far) and take multiple witness statements and compare them with any existing video evidence (boom-tip cameras for example), conflicting accounts are routine, and very often they’re all in the direction of “it wasn’t ME, guv!“. False memory, in many cases. “Narritative construction” sometimes. SNAFU.
        I don’t have a dog in the fight over this newsman’s credibilty, but 6 months without pay does seem pretty harsh.

    3. Pro tip: If every single one of your “memory lapses” is in favor of making you look more heroic, they are probably not lapses but intentional attempts to inflate your reputation.

      It’s more of an “amateur tip” to think that all behaviors are strategic. It’s very common for people to alter memories to protect or inflate the ego when the need is great. I suspect that the…confabulations…did very little to advance Williams’ career.

  3. Ronald Reagan recalled being present at the liberation of concentration camps in WWII, when in fact he never left Culver City.

    1. There are many stories that strongly suggest he was suffering Alzheimer’s (which eventually killed him) while President. Donald Reagan told G.H.W. Bush to “prepare to take office” at the inauguration for Reagan’s second term.

          1. Could have been either one, since they swapped jobs — Sec. Treasury/Chief of Staff — in The Gipper’s second term (though my guess would be Baker since he’s an old Bush-family retainer and thus would have been more likely to pass along a comment like that to Poppy on the QT).

            Not sure when RR’s Alzheimer’s set in, but it seemed to me he lost something off his fastball following Hinkley’s assassination attempt. FWIW, Donald’s last name was “Regan,” like Lear’s middle daughter, rather than ray-gun like his boss.

  4. I disagree. It wasn’t just the helicopter incident. There also were the Katrina fabrications. I think NBC should have fired him outright. Hillary should have been held to account to a greater degree about the Bosnia sniper incident, and her snarky nonapology was evidence that she thinks we’re all idiots. It’s not as if NBC is going to beat Brian Williams with sticks, although he might say so.

  5. This situation was handled in an extreme manner. FOX has ‘stretched the truth’ to the point of outright lies, and yet they continue without missing a step. Politicians lie through their teeth and yet they not only keep their jobs, but THEY ARE RE-ELECTED.

    1. The difference is that FOX does news when its convenient and needed to make it look like a real outlet for journalism for its base, but it is not a real news outlet much of the time. It is, at the other times (and this is much of the time) merely a mouthpiece from a particular facet of the far right. We do not expect it to be credible.
      NBC is trying to maintain real journalism credibility here. Whether one agrees with this ruling or not, that is what they are trying to do.

  6. tell us that we can indeed construct false memories about such incidents—and believe them to be true.

    That was the first thing I thought; after all, for such a public person to lie about facts that are easy to verify seems very foolish.

    But then I thought: would NBC rather have a lying anchorman or one who didn’t know what truth was? I decided that they’d prefer the liar, which is why they got that.

    1. “lie about facts that are easy to verify seems very foolish”

      It seems some people lie for the thrill of getting away with it.

      1. “It seems some people lie for the thrill of getting away with it.”

        True, but then you’re moving into psychopathy waters. Strategic lies and memory distortion are something that all of us are guilty of on occasion.

        1. The problem with Williams is that this was not an isolated incident. Stories not coming from right-wing sources say that his co-workers joked about his resume enhancing stories.

          I misremember things, but my false memories are not uniformly self serving.

          1. This is the consensus I have been hearing. He had a pattern of inflation of stories. Most of those were not while doing news at NBC, but in other interviews, but still I can see why NBC felt they had to react. They would lose credibility if they did not.

    2. for such a public person to lie about facts that are easy to verify seems very foolish

      That, in itself, is evidence for the argument that he has constructed a false narritative which he (probably) believed to have been true. Until proven otherwise.
      The UK press is full of people who deny $CRIME$ repeatedly, until their defence lawyer sees the CCTV of them kicking a granny down the street and shows it to them. “Not Guilty” plea withdrawn.
      Some of that is gaming the system (“does the prosecution really have eyewitnesses? will they have the gonads to testify?”) but I suspect that “I couldn’t really have done that – I’m not a granny-kicker!” has in many cases led to construction of false memories. Particularly with drink/ drug fuelled cases.

    3. I think that, very often, a person’s motivation for lying outweighs their consideration of the likelihood that they’ll be caught.

      I think it’s eminently plausible that Williams lied outright and was simply in denial about his chances of being found out. I would guess the desire to enhance his persona in that way was very strong, especially given that anchors, actors, and the like typically crave attention.

  8. Oh dear, with great respect, this is the one time I disagree with you, Prof Coyne – on Brian Williams. Do you think one forgets something like being shot at or not shot at in such an event? Even 12 years ago? I had a bad( nobody hurt) car accident 30 years ago and it is as vivid & accurate ( I am quite sure) as the day it happened in my mind’e eye.
    More important, Williams is a journalist. The standard for them must be very, very high. He has always struck me as a celebrity TV sort with a big ego who loves being part of the inside baseball so it was no surprise to me that he was caught in a lie. He so loves being close to power, albeit with geniality. And just because there are many others who are deceitful, got,get, away with lies is no reason not to condemn his.

    1. Readers are welcome to disagree with me, so long as they do so politely (as you have) and don’t call me names!

      I’d suggest reading Elizabeth Loftus on false memories. The answer is yes, people can forget something like this after 12 years.

      It’s only a lie if Williams knew he was telling an untruth, and I don’t think any of us know that, so I wouldn’t use the word “lie”. In court, if you accuse someone of lying, that means they knew they were not telling the truth, and you have to prove that in a libel case.

      As to whether journalists should be held to higher standards than Presidents, well, I don’t think so.

      1. Also, as Mr. Williams said I think in an interview – perhaps I am embroidering! – he was in a tense and sometimes traumatic situation. I can see memories becoming conflated in the aftermath of being in a warzone.

        I’ve never been in a situation quite as scary as he was at the time. In middle school, a friend told me a hilarious and vivid story about himself from elementary school and later that year I recounted it as though I had been there; he reminded me I was not, in fact we went to different elementary schools.

        I don’t think anyone can say for sure that Mr. Williams is telling the truth now about that, or the other, lie he’s repeated – it’s certainly not the first instance of a journalist repeating second-hand stories as personal experience. When one works long, long days, often in trying circumstances, and reads other people’s words for a living, though, who’s to say how the brain might or might not behave?

        1. I spent a year in Vietnam, and although I saw a lot of distant shooting and saw a few dead people by the side of the road, I have no memories of being shot at. Not even in the few times I was in a helicopter.

          Considering the popular imagination of the Vietnam experience is that everyone was constantly under attack all the time, I find it difficult to convince people that tens — maybe hundreds — of thousands of soldiers never saw any action at all. Its a bit like being from Chicago and never having seen a gangster or gang shooting.

          The thing is, that Williams’ story was questioned almost immediately. That he would continue repeating it without “fact checking” is a bit pathological. More so, since he has a reputation for embellishing war stories.

          1. Yes, I think there are plenty of details that point to outright lying.

            I am definitely one to give a person the benefit of the doubt, and I’ll give it to Williams, but it seems to me the doubt is very small.

        2. My point would be that it is very easy to concoct or embellish war stories.

          Veterans are not particularly forgiving of this.

          The tendency not to forgive seems directly proportional to the amount of combat one has actually been involved in.

          1. Well you would know better than I, that’s for sure. And I know that there are combat veterans who devote their lives to exposing exaggerators and worse: alleged war heroes who never served a day outside a reserve base office, if they served at all.

            My ex-brother-in-law (but still brother!) was a Marine in ‘Nam from 1965 till 1969, and was part of beach-storming operations. He lost a few comrades to sniper fire in the night, just standing there having a smoke. Everybody’s made differently that’s for sure – he says combat scarred him far less than the simple fact that he missed out on regular civilian life with my sister during his young adulthood. If anything, he plays down the drama of his experience – I guess that’s a real warrior for you.

      2. if you accuse someone of lying, that means they knew they were not telling the truth, and you have to prove that in a libel case.

        In UK practise – which may or may not be a good guide to US practice, one of the things that the court has to establish, apart from the material facts of a case, is the presence of (in Latin) a mens rea or a “guilty mind”. In Scots law, it’s the “culpable” in “culpable homicide” (manslaughter, second degree murder) compared to a non-culpable homicide ; on the Plains of Englandshire, I recall a TV series that focussed on murders where the big question was the presence of “malice aforethought” ; from what I’ve seen of the American (Hollywood) legal system, the same concept exists, though I couldn
        t put my finger on specifics ; watching the excellent “Spiral” and other French dramas, I’m sure similar concepts exist there, but I’ even less able to donne un doigt sur le mot”
        See previous comment re : forensics versus eyewitness. Seeing the granny-kicker kick several times, turn away, then walk back and resume kicking “Granny” is the sort of thing that it is very difficult to establish (with confidence) from witness interviews (withut coming perilously close to “leading the witness”), but 5 seconds of CCTV can be a slam dunk (some doughnut related American activity?), end of argument, change of plea, throw oneself upon the mercy of the court.
        Some years ago, I witnessed a similar kicking, gave statements, returned to the cop shop for more statements (interrogation drill for court, I realised at the time), and went to my optician to get a trial set of contact lenses. To wear in court. To be able to see the “Liverpudlian In A Suit” (the Accused – old joke, oft retold by Liverpudlians) and have a chance of identifying him. As a scientist, who could wasn’t so pissed that I missed the events, and gave a detailed, ID-evidence rich statement minutes later, the Police (well, the junior Proc. Fisc, who I was at Uni with) obviusly thought I’d be a killer witness. I suspect that the Defence Advocate did too, because after 2 hours reading New Scientist in the witness’ waiting room (deliberate ; a non-controversial, evidence-based popular magazine ; no grounds to challenge me as a witness. You have to be careful.), when the case was called, and the lawyers were informed which witnesses had turned up … sudden change of plea, and the Accused played the false memory card as mitigation for wasting the court’s time.
        When I say that I hate contact lenses, I speak from “I really really hate this situation” experience.
        All that said – it remains unproven whether The Accused really did create false memories, or whether his brief was flying a kite.

        1. spiral : very good indeed.

          guilty : benefit of the doubt, we cannot look in his head (yet).

          Believable as a journalist: I don’t know him, but in general journalist like judges and scientist cannot afford a truth-bending reputation, how undeserved it may be.

          Nobody trusts politicians, so lying is expected behavior. Read my lips.

          1. No new taxes>
            The cheque is in the post.
            I paid that last week.
            I won’t come in your mouth.
            You’ll love iit ; its a way of life!
            Geeee, it looks just like a Telefunken U-47. With leather.
            Do people still fall for these things? (Evidently, ‘yes’.)

    2. Do you think one forgets something like being shot at or not shot at in such an event?

      I don’t think many poeple would forget being shot at. But I think sometimes honest people unintentially create false memories of events that didn’t happen to them, based on the stories they’ve heard. See my post #23.

    3. “it is as vivid & accurate ( I am quite sure) as the day it happened in my mind’e eye.”

      But how can you be sure if it’s “accurate”? Being vivid is not a proof that these memories are accurate, but rather the opposite.

      The only objective way to do that would be if a video footage of the accident that you haven’t seen is found and your account of the event is compared against it (without you seeing it!).

      In fact, as you undoubtedly recalled it many, many times, these memories are likely quite distorted—the memories are reconstructed when they are mentally replayed, after which they are overwritten back in the memory.

      So, technically you are recalling not the actual event, but rather your last recollection of it.

      1. True enough. I DID say “I am quite sure”. I should have phrased that differently: “I hope I remember correctly.”? Yes, I have relived the minor car crash many times – it was all my fault -and of course I may have unwittingly embellished it in that mind’s eye. I made no claim to it being the Cat’s truth. Nor am I a journalist. Some old memories just may be accurate.
        There is one “an ill wind blows some good” from the Williams debacle:
        The renewed focus on the more important journalistic falsities that the irresponsible section of the 4th estate made that in large part led to the Iraq invasion by bush & co.

    1. I believe Prof. Ceiling Cat is mistaken. Brian Williams took the anchor desk at NBC after Tom Brokaw’s retirement. Peter Jennings was indeed at ABC.

        1. I like that you didn’t correct the (minor )error in your piece. It results in putting special emphasis on the false memory possibilities.

  10. It’s my understanding the incident happened an hour before he arrived at the scene. If that’s true it strains credibility to imagine he believes he was in a helicopter that got shot down.

    A lot of politicians and media figures are narcissists, who are known to make up things and then start to sort-of believe them.

  11. I’m not in the debate over what the punishment should be on this issue. My concern is that for this particular moment the standard for journalism goes way up. It’s just another part of this instant condemnation we live in on the net.

    Where were all the journalist back in 2003 before we went over the cliff into the Iraq war? For the most part they were merely cheerleaders for one big mistake. It was sickening and disgusting and that is where the much larger and important issue concerning journalism should be.

    1. I don’t think he needs to be punished at all but like a scientist, judge or politician a journalist with a bad reputation cannot do his job properly. In my opinion they have to adhere to higher standards.

  12. I pretty much am in complete agreement with you.

    I just want to add, that I think there is a realness in that, though his helicopter was not hit, he was in no less the same mortal peril as the other personnel in the other 3 helicopters.I think his psyche wants to acknowledge/express this experience to the outside world to make them understand just how real the mortal peril was for him as an individual. He merely wants to be taken a seriously as if it had been his helicopter that had sustained hit(s). (And this want may be entirely subconscious to Brian.)

    Actually Clinton’s exaggeration was not the same as Williams because, if I remember correctly, the reports were that she was no where near any live firings in her incident.

    For some reason, this is being used to tie Williams (or at least his career)to the stake and burn him.

    1. These were my thoughts exactly. When there is fire (of any type) around you, how accurate will you be as to who was hit with what type of missile? It’s possible that he was shell-shocked and unable to understand what exactly was going on.

      1. The interesting thing is that, had his story been about an attack that happened just before he boarded a similar chopper, he would still have a that could’ve been me” type story – which is still far more dramatic than anything that happened to me during that time frame. If it’s true his case was a conscious confabulation from the start, it’s especially sad and pathetic because he was still doing something pretty daring just being there. What a weird episode this is!

    2. I just want to add, that I think there is a realness in that, though his helicopter was not hit, he was in no less the same mortal peril as the other personnel in the other 3 helicopters.

      What happens nearby (in time and space) is quite important information.
      I’ve never been kidnapped by Somali pirates. But hearing over the ship-to-shore radio that a supply boat about 40 nm E from us had been subject to several hours of assault was rather stressful, since we knew our defences consisted of three shit-scared police cadets and three World-War-1 Lee-Enfield rifles. Bolt action. I took to carrying my dive knife wit me at all times after that, because 2 years in a Mogadishu cellar did not appeal.
      ISIS have changed the balance of risk.
      The company … well, there are rumours. Which I have to take seriuosly. (I like the guys – and I like their approach. But I’ve also got to calculate the calculus of costs versus benefits.)
      I may have to chooose to take weapons training. I’ll shoot to wound when appropriate. Otherwise : corpses aren’t an immediate security threat.

  13. There was an interesting discussion about this with a psychologist on BBC2’s Newsnight. The psychologist said false memories are not uncommon, & said that if, for example, we were to ask a random selection of people if they recall watching the news footage of the media/paparazzi chasing Princess Diana in the tunnel in Paris, then perhaps half would say yes, even though no such footage exists. We imagine things when we think about them, we envisage the tunnel – or a tunnel – & we have seen paparazzi chase cars perhaps elsewhere on news programmes, so we re-live the thing in our heads. Do that enough times & I suppose it becomes a firm pathway.

    This links in with religion, which exploits that phenomenon with mass hallucinations, or with people convincing themselves that something happened that did not.

    I find it hard to remeber much in my life – I can remember loads of other stuff, but much less of what I have lived…

    2. This type of false memory is greatly enhanced by the suggestive footage documentary makers and TV news directors use to have moving images with their films or news items- even when no accurate footage exists.

      I, for one, think I have a good impression of the battlefield sounds of the Battles of Kursk and Khe San because I saw the Battlefield documentary series which have sound all over the place. However, thinking a bit deeper, it’s more likely most of the footage originally didn’t have any sound.

      The Diana-Dodi chase probably came to life because many stations made 3D animations of it.

      Be prepared in the future to see more and more realistic computer-generated animation to illustrate events without witnesses.

  14. Fox News lies on a daily show basis to stir hatred for minorities and the poor, but Brian Williams misremembering an event from 12 years ago was too much? Once again journalists and the media have their priorities screwed up.

    “Finally someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq war.” – Jon Stewart

  15. False memories are easily constructed and they get falser with time. However, Williams is a journalist and needs to be especially scrupulous, aware of the possibility of false memory (from experience as a journalist), and careful to check the readily available record. Whether six months is fair is debatable, but a ruined career is entirely out of bounds and excessive.

  16. I’m saddened by William’s troubles. He seems like a mensch to me. I think there’s a stunning hypocrisy in media overall. When Newsmen promote corporate or government lies, then when those lies are exposed, never have a public statement about their duty to the “truth” or experience even the slightest throes of conscience, I say a pox on all their houses.
    I’m wishing Brian all the best, and I hope he lands on his feet after all this. However, I don’t see how he can return to his position with any credibility.

  17. I happen to agree with you, Professor Coyne. The punishment doesn’t fit the “crime”. Maybe a 1 or 2 month suspension would have been more appropriate.

    Like a lot of people, I find it disturbing how many prominent pro-Iraq war propagandists reputations hardly suffered or didn’t suffer at all even with all the lies they spread and the death and disaster that resulted. These hypocrites have a lot of nerve to call for for Williams’ firing.

  18. I agree that NBC News suspended Brian Williams for six months and will eventually give his seat away to someone else to make an example and to show other journalists that you better be careful or the same thing can happen to you.
    Brian Williams is good at what he does and he made one mistake and he will land on his feet when this blows over he will get another job in some other capacity at some other news organization.
    (The daily show is going to need a new host at the end of the year,
    Perhaps Brian Williams can take that show over we know he likes the show business aspect of his job he’s hosted Saturday Night Live is friends with Jimmy Fallon. Having someone with the credentials of Brian Williams take over the daily show would truly be evolution of the genus and species “inform us : entertain us.” I predict it would be the highest rated news show ever.

  20. “Something has happened to Americans to make them harsh and unforgiving, and I’m not sure what it is.”

    I’ve had that feeling too on occasion. Though I’d say -selectively- harsh and unforgiving, since it seems that lots of egregious offenders receive no punishment at all while others get thrown under the collective bus for comparatively small errors.

    (I have no opinion on the case at hand, I haven’t followed it closely enough).

  21. For those readers who don’t think it possible that Williams mis-remembered this, read Steve Novella’s take on this at Neurologica here:

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

    It seem’s perfectly reasonable, and consistent with the current science on memory, that Williams had no intent to deceive. Every time we recall a memory, even traumatic memories, we reconstruct that memory imperfectly. Studies have shown that memories recalled shortly after an event quite often don’t match with memories recalled years later.

  22. Short-timer Jon Stewart had a great take on l’affaire Williams: in short, all the lies upon lies told before, during and after the Iraq war – by politicians, journalists and other talking heads in the media – and THiS is the one that gets a person in trouble?

  23. Remember in 2008 when Hillary Clinton said that she came under fire in Bosnia at an airport? That was just as false as (and similar to) Williams’s misstep.

    Not only do I remember it, but I remember a psychologist/memory expert arguing in an op-ed that honest people make this sort of memory mistakesfar more often than we like to admit. That a person can hear a story that happneed to someone else, incorporate it unintentionally or subconsciously as their own memory, and then begin to sincerely believe it happened to them.

    So, I wonder if that’s what happened here. I’m not saying it did, but I am saying maybe we shouldn’t immediately conclude that such stories are intentional lies for gain. Especially given that, in the Williams case, its not really clear what gain he expected to come out of it.

  24. A similar controversy raged around Doris Kearns Goodwin’s alleged plagiarism in her two books on the Roosevelts and the Kennedys. (There were long verbatim quotes from other books which were frequently cited, but those quotes were not attributed.)

    This forced her to vacate her position as a commentator on “PBS Newshour” in 2002.

    But her career has not been hurt.

    She has since gotten an Andrew Carnegie medal, and been nominated for a couple of book prizes, so there’s certainly hope for Brian Williams.

  25. NBC’s corporate existence is threatened by credibility problems. NBC News is the organization that augmented a report of exploding GMC trucks with dynamite.

    If our anchors were “news readers” it might not be a problem, but when they are also the show’s producer, their integrity is an issue.

    It’s a problem when you become a laughingstock.

      1. My response at #39 is a link to the LA Times article about Dateline NBC rigging a crash to make it appear that a story they had been running concerning GM trucks exploding on impact was true.

        1. Oh, so you’re talking about something that happened in the early 90s rather than something recent.

    1. I have a hard time believing anyone would link to the Daily Mail as if it were a reputable source.

  27. There is nothing unfair about it. Williams is not entitled to his job or the perks that go with it. He will keep it only as long as his employer thinks he does it well.

    Williams failed in his job, which is to convince viewers he is worth watching. He does that by a combination of good looks, smooth speaking, and engendering trust on very little basis. He has eroded the trust. For a network that already got caught faking tapes in the Zimmerman case that’s no small thing. Trust earned on the basis of no real evidence can evaporate quickly on the basis of evidence. Zimmerman, now Williams.

  28. If false memory is to blame, then Brian Williams must be preternaturally good at it. Unlike most of us, his experiences are well documented and could be /should be reviewed as time passes.

  29. As a former journalist, I think it is important for a news organization to protect its most necessary asset, public trust. When Jayson Blair was caught falsely reporting stories for the NY Times, not only did he have to go but the two top editors also had to resign. What Williams did was not as severe as Blair’s lies, but he did in fact fail to report facts as they occurred. This is pretty much unforgivable in reputable journalism (so Fox may be excused).

    I do, however, like Jon Stewart’s brilliant way of putting it in perspective: the news organizations that failed the much more important task of reporting on the lies that started the war are now jumping all over this comparatively minor incident. “Finally! Somebody is telling us the truth about Iraq!”

    3. Yeah, Jon Stewart nailed it with all the sanctimonious piling on that surrounded the story. Williams should be held accountable (and he did come clean, after all) but shouldn’t accountability extend to other journalists and political leaders for the Iraq lies?

  30. In a delusional moment I pretend that NBC News, instead of being simply vindictive, is sending a message that it will ruthlessly pursue the truth, not only within its own ranks, but particularly among the flotsam and jetsam of Washington and the world at large. But who am I kidding?

    2. Rather interestingly, your link claims Williams has been telling this story for a decade. If true, his ‘false memory’ can’t be attributed to the lengthy passage of time.

  33. What really bothers me is that this story was done as a thank you to the military man that helped Brian. The reporting of how the helicopter went down was a side comment about what happened. The story was not done as a way to make Brian look heroic, but as a thank you to a man he had not seen in 12 years. It is very unjust. The brass at NBC should be the ones being suspended for their knee jerk reactions!

  34. I second Prof. Ceiling Cat’s call for leniency here.

    I will also take this opportunity to
    recommend a most excellent book I’m reading right now on this subject. It is by a judge who lives in Denver, and became interested in the evolutionary roots of our punishment instinct for very practical reasons. It is “The Punisher’s Brain – The Evolution of Judge and Jury”.

    http://www.cambridge.org/US/academic/subjects/law/socio-legal-studies/punishers-brain-evolution-judge-and-jury

  35. The samne day, Jon Stewart announced he’d be stepping down at the Daily Show. Coincidence? Or will we be seeing the NBC Evening News with Jon Stewart?

  36. If that kind of embellishment, or a similar breach is the standard for “damaging trust”, then there is not one newsroom in America that isn’t guilty.
    Not one.
    Not even close.

  38. I do think it’s more severe than you depict. The pilot who defended Brian Williams, saying that it was the helicopter in front that was hit by the RPG but that all the helicopters were being shot at, has backtracked and begun questioning his own memory. Apparently the “helicopter in front” wasn’t immediately ahead, but 20-30 minutes ahead, and the helicopter containing Williams never came under fire.

    They did spend a couple days on the ground in a dust storm in hostile territory waiting for reinforcements, though, which is harrowing enough.

    I nonetheless agree that Williams was unfairly suspended. It seems to me that the news media want to deflect from their own lies and biased reporting by scapegoating Williams. How about suspending the NBC executives who, during the runup to the war in Iraq, ensured that the station parroted the official line by firing all news anchors who questioned it? Or the anchors who deliberately implied that Iraq was behind the attack on 9/11. Those are far worse lies…

  39. The problem I’m having is that don’t know if there is a way to tell if it was a false memory was it simply a case of getting caught like this ?
    I’d like to believe it was a mistake, but I can’t be sure. I suppose I’d agree with the suspension if someone got hurt as a result.

  40. Something has happened to Americans to make them harsh and unforgiving, and I’m not sure what it is.

    Social networking, 24 hr news cycle constantly in need of feeding, reality TV, “social justice” authoritarian and purity movements – all contribute to this meanness, this need to call everyone out, this least charitable interpretation of everything to gain political power. I think it’s bigger than just America, but we’re leading.

    1. I agree with you.

      I fear that all the things you cite are just making us more tribalistic than ever, which doesn’t bode well.

  41. I thought it was a bit hard on him, relatively speaking. But then I remembered the “benefits of prayer” report that he a few weeks back. That was a pure cynical attempt to conflate two stories together to create a headline about scientific proof of prayer.

  42. I still like the BBC “here is the news read by….” approach. It separates the newsreader, who is simply presenting data from a journalist who is, particularly in a war zone, in the thick of things and buried in the inevitable “fog of war”. Combining the roles of journalist and presenter somehow seems akin to a conflict of interest.

  43. Williams’s memory lapse can be forgiven if indeed he was traumatized by the event or if his memory is getting seriously compromised by age. Does anyone know how close his chopper was to the one that got hit and did his chopper have to make any emergency landing too?

    Everybody is different. My birth family and I have gone through some traumatic things and we all remember and agree on the crux of what happened.

    A suspension should be enough. I don’t think he should be fired. I note that he had renewed a 5-year contract at an annual salary of $10 million. At that rate, he better not embellish nor stretch the truth anymore.

  44. I think the problem is NBC knows there are several other instances where he stretched the truth. Either way, I don’t see him coming back to NBC from this suspension.

  45. Point 1: Is there an argument for sacking the whole of Faux News (I know, free speech and all that), on the grounds that it wouldn’t recognise truth if they were sharing a helicopter…

    Point 2: I can recommend Robert Trivers’ Book “Deceit and Self-Deceit” (broadly speaking, the conclusion is that we all do both, for good evolutionary reasons, and if we think we don’t we are probably… deceiving ourselves).

    There’s a Point 3, but I’ve got work to finish.

  46. I’m rather surprised NBC made such a big deal of this. Prior to cable when we had just 3 networks credibility was everything so I would have expected a response like this. Now that news has become an entertainment industry where flashy headlines, pretty faces, and pandering are what draws viewers I didn’t expect this reaction.

  47. Brian Williams didn’t replace Peter Jennings. Peter Jennings was an ABC news anchor. Brian Williams has always been on NBC.

    1. See the comment thread at #9 above. PCC has admitted that he had a false memory in this case. 😀

  48. To me this BW lie and the one by H Clinton are in the same class – they both did it, maybe even believed it, because they’re full of themselves. HC, I recall, explained her false claim by saying that she misspoke. That, to me, is more troubling because one doesn’t misspeak in sentences. She should have just explain, as was probably true, that somehow she misremembered.

    I’m not worried that BW is prone to reporting falsehoods because falsehoods are easy to identify. I don’t think lies per se represent much of a threat. It’s bias of the type that Fox News practices that is dangerous.

  49. I thought it was harsh simply because police officers have unjustly executed citizens and often, if they are taken off duty at all, get time off with pay.

    Even if he lied consciously, he’s only human and it doesn’t make me think he is making up the news.

  50. I’ve been thinking a bit about this. We know, and it has been proven that false memories are common, much more so than most people realize. I suspect he may indeed have placed himself in those memories, perhaps unconsciously (I also believe that some people being attacked for plagiarism may really have forgotten where those phrases have come from–I don’t see how one could justify one without looking at the other). I had a family member (now deceased) who told lots of stories about things that happened to him, yet they were really things in the newspaper. He was not lying as such, he was just not able to separate reality from imagination.

    NBC has a need to present (whether in fact or not) people with public credibility. If the credibility gets damaged, whether fairly or not, that becomes a liability.

    On a side note, I think this should again open up an examination of the weight we place on ‘eyewitness’ testimony in court cases. Like Williams, witnesses may not be consciously lying, but their memories may be altered by what police believe happened or their need to fill in details that they didn’t actually observe.

    1. I was a juror in two court cases where witnesses disagreed flatly on details. In one case, whether a witness was sitting in the front seat of a car or the back, in the other, on which side of a room the window was. In neither case was there any obvious advantage one way or the other for any witness to be lying – they just remembered it different.

  51. Ok my sick sense of humor now visualizes a cartoon, with Williams claiming “I used to be a TV news anchor “

  52. Another thing I remember (ha! But can I trust that?) from Loftus’s book is that false-memory forming isn’t arbitrary: our memory re-writes history so as to bring us closer to where the action was.

    Williams’s account of his close encounter may be exactly what you’d expect from a deliberate lie, but it’s also exactly what you’d expect from a false memory.

  53. What if John Stewart took over the anchor desk at NBC? I seriously do not think that will be considered, but dammit Stewart (and Colbert) regularly dug into the hard-hitting news that the other outlets would not touch.
    Admittedly not objectively…

  54. Speaking of conspiracy theories, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough says “it’s not hard to think” Jon Stewart announced he is retiring from The Daily Show as some kind of favor to Brian Williams.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scarborough-jon-stewart-brian-williams-favor

    If it’s not hard, the reason is it’s not “thinking” at all. How one earth could an announcement like that do anything to take the heat off of a journalist in a mess caused by a lie he told? Is there something in Jon Stewart’s history that would lead anyone to conclude he plans his career moves around anything other than his, you know, career? Brian Willliams may well tell the truth every day for the rest of his life, but I doubt JoeScar will ever be able to resist saying idiotic things on a daily basis.

  55. ” . . . [Williams] said that he had flown into Iraq in a helicopter that was hit and forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade. It turns out that his helicopter was not in fact hit, but the one in front of him was.”

    I read in at least one post here that the helicopter “in front” was thirty minutes ahead. If so, seems to me that that was far enough ahead that BW couldn’t see that happen, and therefore would have had to have somehow heard about it second-hand.

    Were there survivors of that other helo mishap? In a reverse of the BW incident, would they somehow doubt that they had been hit? Could they somehow have a false memory to-wit – that their helo had not been hit?

    I’d be less skeptical/cynical regarding Mr. Williams’s situation were the news not the “infotainment” it has evolved to be. I refuse to watch Diane Sawyer’s replacement. I can’t stand all this breathlessness and drama and borderline yelling and faux shock and hoopla. But I guess that’s what the Amuricun people – and NBC and other media “suits” – in their collective wisdom, want.

    Could Cronkite, Severeid, Huntley, Brinkley, Schorr, Murrow get hired today?

    1. Fox news has no claim to being a reputable news source. Though they might argue otherwise, even they know that.

      1. Exactly so. When you’re running what is transparently and outspokenly an “entertainment” network for the echo-chamber crowd, it doesn’t matter. When you’re running a news outlet, what you report HAS to be what happened, or you lose your credibility. In my mind, six months isn’t enough — false memories or notherwise, fact-checking needs to be a constant, ingrained by force of habit, and not an occasional afterthought. Personally, I’d have warned him the first time, and terminated him after that.

    2. Okay, I’ll bite- what’s he claiming?

      Was he a sniper in Vietnam? Did he command a tank platoon? Fly Wild Weasel missions?

      1. “Back in 2006, O’Reilly took an extended book promotion tour to Kuwait where he visited with soldiers and signed copies of his book. Reports at the time described how “servicemembers asked O’Reilly about his own tour of duty in Kuwait during Desert Storm.” That might have been an interesting story except for the fact that O’Reilly never did a tour of duty in Kuwait during Desert Storm, or anywhere else since he never served in the military at all.”

        From newscorpse.com

  57. Here’s what I’d like to ask of the NBC gods:
    “Why now?” Don’t tell me they didn’t know or suspect he was embellishing stuff before. They’re just as culpable, IMO. They have a responsibility to oversight (you know the kind I mean). Sounds like a bit of scapegoating going’ on as well.

  60. I agree that the suspension for the misstatements by Williams about his personal experience was excessive punishment.

    Williams made much more damaging misstatements in introducing two reports broadcast in December about the supposed healing power of prayer. I discussed the first report here:

    https://richarddawkins.net/2015/01/nbc-nightly-news-wields-the-power-of-pandering-in-power-of-prayer-report%EF%BB%BF/

    and the second report here:

    http://web.randi.org/swift/brain-porn-in-nbc-nightly-news-power-of-prayer-follow-up

  61. I suspect Williams will be back, with a “sincere and humble” apology. Williams is a very big personality. NBC’s worry is that he’ll be picked up by a competitor and siphon viewers (in some time slot) from them. If I’m wrong, Lester Holt is a very capable successor.

  62. Decades ago when I was young, I went to a party at a flat where the host, Terry, had a giant NZ flag as a bedspread. It was a good party. 20 years later I met him by chance on a bus, he invited me to his wedding a few weeks later. We swapped reminiscences, I said “Last time I saw you you were walking down the road wrapped in a flag”. (And I would have sworn that under oath). Terry looked at me oddly.

    Came the wedding, and at the reception the wall was covered in old photos, including one of ME wearing the NZ flag.

    I know what happened – my mind remembered ‘Terry’ and ‘big flag’ and put the two together. And if Terry hadn’t taken a photo I’d still swear on oath to this day that HE was wearing the flag.

    1. Some would say that it couldn’t have been TOO good a party, or you wouldn’t remember it at all!

      1. Middlin’ good, then. The best thing about it (and unrelated to the quality of the party as such) was that, considerably to my surprise, I also acquired the phone number of a very nice girl with whom I had some happy times thereafter. We eventually parted on good terms and she occupies a warm place in my memory. 🙂

  63. Regardless of whether he remembered incorrectly or he was exaggerating his experience, I couldn’t agree with you more. Although appearances can deceive, he has always appeared to me to be a genuine guy. I’ve watched him quite a bit over the years and I can’t tell whether he leans to the left or to the right. That alone is enough to get me to trust him.

    I immediately thought of Hillary Clinton when this story broke. She remember her plane landing at airports (plural) while hostile combatants strafed the runway. To your point about holding a presidential candidate to a different standard, although I lean to the left on most issues, it’s difficult not to wonder about liberal bias in the media getting Hillary a pass. Maybe it’s only Clinton bias. I’m not saying that because she got a pass that he should get one. I’m saying that her comments were much more egregious and it seems to be a pattern for her to say whatever seems politically expedient and getting away with it while as far as I can see, this is Brian Williams’ first offense.

    Is it possible that Brian Williams is being treated differently because he, in fact, leans to the right? I don’t know and as I already wrote, I don’t know his political leanings, but it’s a question worth asking for those interested in the truth.

  64. Speaking of mistakes, Williams replaced Tom Brokow not Peter Jennings. You’re confusing NBC with ABC.
    But let’s be clear. Everybody lies. We decide the penalty for the lie will be. Someone reading the news to us daily on the nightly news apparently requires more veracity than the Secretary of State.

    2. I’m not sure anyone doubts Williams has more credibility that the secretary of state, or the previous one. He has more than several such secretaries I could name. So what? Why does Williams, rather than some other “journalist” have the job he has? Because people like to watch him. It’s his job to get people to watch his show. It’s just that simple. And now fewer people like to watch him. They trust him less, and they have reason to. He’s not being punished in an unfair way, no-one is claiming he’s a worse person than Pol Pot, but he has failed at his job.

  65. I’ve held off since I seldom watch TV (don’t have one or want one) but I have seen Williams at work.

    I’m unimpressed but then the news has become entertainment.

    However, Faye Flam, at Forbes has a wonderful essay on this. Blowhardism and she cites some evolutionary literature by Trivers as well.

  66. Is what Williams did far different from a journalist who plagarizes another writer’s work? To me, the offenses are similar and deserve a similar response. That response should include condemnation and punishment, both of which Williams has received.

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