NBC’s Brian Williams Caught Lying About Personal Story During Iraq Invasion

This story was so despicable, on so many levels, that I almost do not know where to begin.

NBC's national nightly news anchor, Brian Williams, lied about being in a helicopter that was shot down, and mentioned that "fact" several times, including one time recently, before being called out on it and then being forced to admit that he never actually was on that helicopter. Instead, he was on a helicopter that responded to those that were fired upon and shot down.

Now, for over a decade, Williams claimed to remember being on the helicopter. Now, he admitted after being called out that, indeed, he was not on the helicopter. He suddenly remembered not being on the chopper, but claimed to have gotten confused about it during all of those years.

The question is if it is even possible that he was so traumatized by it all, that he actually made some kind of honest mistake in thinking that he himself had been in the chopper that was shot down. But it seems so far fetched, as to really be implausible. After all, the guys that actually were on the chopper remembered clearly enough that Williams was not on it with them.

So, he lied. Lied, most likely, to advance his career, and in so doing, he placed himself in a position where he pretended to have been closer to danger than he actually was, to glamorize his own role in reporting the war, and to ultimately gain undeserved credentials in his field. It worked, evidently, because he became the news anchor on a national network, and gained fame and likely some measure of fortune along the way.

He profited, in other words, during his exaggerated reporting of an unjust war. An unjust war that was begun because of enormous exaggerations and lies, and which carried on largely through enormous exaggerations and lies, with the media being particularly guilty in this regard.

And Brian Williams was part of the problem. This is a typical example of exactly the kind of irresponsible reporting that is such an obstacle to Americans being better informed, and hopefully, potentially making better decisions.

The name of the game then, however, was deception. Deception through appearances and insinuation. Compare Saddam to Hitler, to Stalin. Compare Iraq to Nazi Germany, or to a rival superpower with a mass arsenal of weaponry, and 45 minute response time. Invade a sovereign nation, and predict that we would be treated like liberators, welcomed with open arms. Show images of statues of Saddam being taken down, and focus on false stories of some poor female trooper being saved. Shut her up when she says that things were not the way that the pres reported them, and blast her as unpatriotic. Block images of bodies being sent back, and try to censor any and all bad news.

Again, irresponsible journalism. Journalism like that was what helped to legitimize the Bush administration and everything that they did, including the criminal activities. Journalism like that has always been a problem in this country, but never as much as the last few decades, when things have just kept growing worse and worse, even though popular media seems to keep getting more lighthearted and sunnier each year.

The real news keeps getting grimmer, but the official news focuses on other things. Focuses on deception. On lying.

When a journalist lies, it compromises the integrity of keeping people informed, which is one of the most sacred things in modern civilization. When that fails, pretty much anything goes.

Brian Williams ultimately lied. He discredited his field, and looked to profit from the tragedy of an unjust war in the process. He failed to hold up the high standards of journalism with integrity. From what I understand, NBC is seriously thinking of firing him. Who knows if they will or not. However, his professional fate, at least in journalism, is already out of his hands. That's only fair, given the magnitude of what he did, and the time that he chose to do it.

Far too many people in the media have become comfortable with taking an active part in the process of the destruction of journalistic integrity, and this has had an enormous impact on the state of our country. At a time of unjust wars, huge corporate scandals with enormous political implications, unsustainable environmental practices, when expenses for such everyday necessities in people's lives such as healthcare and child care, among other things, when we have unsustainable and unfair tax laws that favor huge corporations and the rich to the point of establishing a de facto corporate supremacist state, when elections are bought rather than decided by voters, and when the two-party system sure looks like a one-party system in disguise, since both parties are sponsored by the same people, such ridiculous journalism compromises the knowledge of the viewing audience within the United States, and ultimately amounts to misinformation. This type of journalism has failed to adequately inform the American public of these kinds of diseases that have run rampant throughout our society, to the point that the lack of information has become the problem. Very few people are aware of the actual facts that are leading to America's general downfall, and so this compromised and manufactured journalism is unforgivable. As such, anything that has contributed to a lack of honest and good faith by the media simply cannot be tolerated.

Mr. Williams announced recently that he is stepping away from his anchor position with NBC Nightly News for a few days. Frankly, given the enormity of the deception that he was trying to pass off, and the fact that this incident will surely define and troll him for the rest of his professional career, if not his entire life, I think that the best course is simply never to have him serve as anchor again. News is not entertainment, and certainly also not fiction. We need people who have the stomach to recognize, and report, the enormity of the news out there that truly affects people, and not those who troll on war and other tragedies in order to look more heroic or exciting, or otherwise take the liberty of falsifying the news, and their own role in it in this case. Mr. Williams took it upon himself to sign off temporarily for his compromised integrity. But this divorce should be permanent.

You know, just as a side note, I want to mention that, as many of you know, I write for an online news agency (not on a full-time basis). I am hardly a millionaire, and was indeed hoping to make a few extra bucks with this thing. But most importantly, it offered me the chance to write, and to have articles out there written by me, but given a bigger platform and promotion that I am used to. We are actively encouraged to write on trending subjects, and it seems that, far too often, these trending topics amount to fluff news. Things that, to me, really are not news. One time, when going through our ratings at the moment, if you will, I noticed that of the top twenty articles published on the web site, six of them were about the Kardashians. How can this possibly be considered news? To me, such fluff is part of the problem, since people seem generally and genuinely more interested in gossipy kinds of stories, than on actual news. Part of the problem is that this online news agency, and surely plenty of others out there, actively try to get their writers to write on such subjects, because the payment system is entirely based on views for each article.

So, I get it. It is easy to understand why writers focus far too much on fluff, and less on serious journalism. That surely was particularly true during the Iraq war, when censorship made real news stories hard to come by. But every journalist makes a choice in what is covered, and how it is covered. NBC Nightly News certainly wants to be considered a serious and major news source, and those working for it feel that they have a duty to do. Mr. Williams had a career in journalism, and when tasked with reporting the war in Iraq, he had choices before him. Clearly, he made the wrong one, and much like Dan Rathers apologizing to the public, and to the Bush White House, all of those years ago, Mr. Williams now himself has to apologize to the public. It makes the media look ineffective and untrustworthy, especially when those responsible will, at some point or other, surely cover the White House and other prominent politicians, as both Rathers and Williams have done. But each man did so, surely, to "get" some news story that their competitors did not have. Each news agency wants to be the one with the exclusive. Sometimes, when the focus like that is on ratings, you will get the inevitable fallout. That surely will be the case with NBC News now.

I cannot say for sure when the nation saw the tipping point of when entertainment replaced actual news in the United States, or exactly who is responsible. That amounts to asking whether the chicken or the egg came first. But I know that the problem persists largely because of the tunnel vision focus on numbers and money. The Kardashians, for example, are an ultra wealthy family, and they generate a ton of publicity. Why? I never could understand it. However, they do, and when news agencies actively try and recruit people to focus in on these kinds of "news" stories more than on real stories, that definitely becomes a huge part of the problem. The unspoken truth that exists now has likely existed for decades, and that is that the only thing that really matters is what makes money. This is surely even more pronounced with the major news networks, where ratings are everything. Turn on what passes for the "news" lately, and often, you get transparent attempts at an entertainment show that will give you a little bit of actual news, but will mostly focus on the personalities presenting the "news" to you. I see more witty banter, more opinions, and often, more cool music and visuals and such, and less focus on hardcore news. Who knows when this happened, or how long it took? But mistaking entertainment for news is far from being a minor problem in this country, and much of what we see falling apart around us is very intimately linked to what we, as a people, chose to be our news.

That is why what Mr. Williams did, which surely was aimed to solidify his credentials as well as for ratings, cannot be accepted, or forgiven. We can forgive him personally, he made a mistake, and that is understandable. But professionally, what he "reported" amounted to a major disservice to his viewing audience, and fell under the domain of deception and sensationalism, which was all too common during that time, particularly in relation to the Iraq invasion. I do not wish ill for Mr. Williams, but I also do not think it appropriate to see him presenting the "news" any longer. He has proven himself unqualified, and thus will continue to be, now and forever, unequal to the task, and more part of the problem than of the solution. He made a choice, and chose ratings and personal profit, rather than taking his job of informing the American public seriously and doing so honestly. For that, sorry, but he has to go.





NBC’s Brian Williams recants Iraq story after soldiers protest by Travis Tritten of Stars and Stripes, February 4, 2015:

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/nbc-s-brian-williams-recants-iraq-story-after-soldiers-protest-1.327792