Brian Williams Contradictions
Many of you inquired about my thoughts on Brian Williams when the story broke last week. Williams was giving tribute to a retired solider at a New York Rangers hockey game at the end of January when he said he was in a helicopter that was hit by RPGs in Iraq in 2003. When the soldiers who were there heard his tribute, they realized his story was inaccurate, and hence the story broke last week.
I normally would have commented, but I unfortunately threw out my back shoveling during Chicago’s blizzard, had to cancel a three day class, and was subsequently in a lot of pain and on my back. And when people are in pain, they don’t think clearly, so I refrained.
Williams said at the Ranger’s hockey game, “The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG…Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Feeling better now, and looking at the story again, I don’t think people need much more information now nor do you need to be a lie detector to see the truth. Williams clearly is caught telling different versions of the same events–yes, events–in his life now. Over and over again. It’s truly troubling.
CNN put together a good video here showing some of his contradictions. It can’t be disputed that something is amiss. Furthermore, in the video by CNN, Williams seems to actually take delight in duping people. Do you see it?
It’s very sad to see someone so respected for doing an a good job sabotage himself to this degree. This can happen for multiple reasons. The few that come to mind initially are because they love the ego-boosting attention that comes with impressive stories (ooh, wow, OMG, you are amazing, how do you do it?), or because they get joy in thinking they are smarter than others and no one will notice (it becomes a game). What other motivations do you think one would have to conflate stories like Williams has?
Pathological liar? Sociopath?
That’s a hell of a jump. From getting caught in one lie all the way to pathological liar/sociopath?
I think he just really liked having an awesome story to tell people at cocktail parties and interviews. Lots of people do this. Difference is, most people aren’t a news anchor. I’m guessing it was something that started off innocently enough and then took off and he had to keep up with it. Eventually it became a game. And he could treat it as such because, really, this lie doesn’t matter.
I don’t think it’s as troubling or ominous as Eyes does. (I actually laughed when she said “truly troubling”.) He’s not lying about his actual news reports and the lie that he did tell didn’t really help or hurt any one. Sure, we should go back and make sure his proper new stories still stick, but based on this…*shrug*. People love to be outraged.
It’s really not much of a jump at all, JZ–his behavior reminds me of Lance Armstrong. He’s a liar–plain and simple–and more than that, he’s supposed to be a journalist charged with presenting the facts of the news? I’m a journalist–and I kind of think if you don’t have a problem with his lies, you really don’t expect much, do you?
1. I don’t expect much out of his personal anecdotes, no.
2. Lance Armstrong conducted a massive doping ring through manipulation, direct intimidation (threats), and organizational power plays. That is what made him sociopathic. These two guys aren’t near the same level. It’s a major jump.
3. No need to get personal.
If I watch the news I’m not interested in hearing someone’s ‘personal anecdotes’. A journalist can do a good job – a great job – without making up stories. Show me the truth, let me understand it’s meaning and relevance any day.
But my personal view aside he let the public and the integrity of journalism down that’s why other journalists are bringing it to everyone’s attention.
He mostly kept personal anecdotes to events and interviews.
That’s the thing about this. It has no functional impact on anything. He didn’t lie about anything in his professional, journalistic role. If he did, fine, talk integrity all day long. But with how the situation is right now, integrity is just the selling point. Unless he did some actual damage with false reporting, this controversy has run its course.
You call them ‘personal anecdotes’ after the facts are known.
How do you know he kept his ‘personal anecdotes’ to ‘mostly’ events and interviews? Do we have to wait for another press release to come out?
I called them personal anecdotes before it was exposed as a lie, too. Why did you assume otherwise?
Regarding your two questions:
1. Because based on what we know at the moment, that’s what happened.
2. Yes, we should wait for another press release. If it says anything different, I’ll change my tune.
Why did I assume? There was no indication you had said anything earlier. And probably because I consider ‘personal anecdotes’ a type of minimization after the facts are out. .
You’re right, there was no indication I had said anything earlier (I didn’t by the way; not on this comment section at least). But that’s my point. With no information, you just filled in the gap. You conveniently dismissed it as an after-the-fact minimalization, based solely on an arbitrary preconception. (One that I’m genuinely confused by. It seemed as though you were treating it as a rationalization – a concession of reason to fit my own conclusion – rather than a legitimate difference in point of view.) And as we know, it’s irresponsible to fill in the blanks with preconception, speculation, or assumptions. Basically, this is the same reasoning I just gave you on why we should wait for a press release for new information to come to light.
However, factoring things into the equation that don’t exist yet seems to be your default setting in our conversation. For this, I’m not going to engage with you anymore. Feel free to take the last word if you wish.
Actually I was discussing. But you seem to have taken personal offence at my queries. Like above there was a Question from Janie, you read it as her getting personal. Now you’re pre-accusing me of ‘getting in the last word’.
To pass off my comments as convenient is far from the mark. It’s probabilistic implications. It’s reason and anaylsis and estimation of likelihoods. It’s learning to assess and predict. If I was clear on my assumptions, that’s because I was clear when I made them. Making assumptions isn’t irresponsible. We use them everyday responsibly. My questions to you were testing my assumptions, checking them against the balance of things.
If you want to wait for more facts before you’re certain that’s fine. You’re assuming innocence, I’m assuming he’s guilty of more.
We all have our own points of view, justifying them is another thing altogether.
“I think he just really liked having an awesome story to tell people at cocktail parties and interviews” That’s exactly what I envisioned: him at parties telling stories. It’s like he got sloppy and forgot he shouldn’t do that in any sort of formal capacity. I would be curious to see how he rates in truthfulness in his actual news stories.
To quote someone else, he really does talk in “super-hero language”. It became very obvious to me when I read transcriptions of some of the interviews he’s given. I feel it is pretty much what you’ve said. He did it a little, got away with it and liked how it felt, and did a little more…and more. He really does weave a story full of adjectives, setting, and personality which is entertaining. It’s just not news and it is deceptive. I read somewhere that someone said that even though he said he removed himself because he has become too much the news, he actually has no problem being the news–a lot. It’s just that now it’s unflattering news. I’m curious to see that if we as a society care. Meaning, does he keep his job and do people still watch him? I care, but if I’m not in the majority, than I’d just rather focus my emotional energy on something else. And, it upsets me to think like that.
I want to explain – not defend – why the events that happened to Brian Williams are extremely common. The New Yorker recently wrote an article about this:
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happened-memory-recollection
An awful lot of research has gone into this very point – that people’s memories are very fallible even with flashbulb moments like 9/11. I can’t say if Brian Williams is getting any joy out of inflating stories – what I can say for certain is he’s frequently breaking rule #1 in journalism – check your facts – even if it’s a story that happened to you. In one word, his journalism is sloppy. We can confirm that for sure, but the cause or any response he might get from the sloppy journalism is beyond what I can tell.
The thing about having false memories is that people don’t even know they do it. They think their recollection of the event is rock solid. Even when it’s not. In its most extreme form, there is the Backfire Effect – that happens when a person is stating something that is not true – and is shown the evidence they are wrong, and then strengthen their false belief rather than correcting to the truth.
The important point – and one Brian Williams shows as well as anyone in the world – is these people are *confident* they are right in their recalling of the events. Virtually none of the interviewers challenged Brian (from what I can tell) nor did they check their facts at the time. However, research has shown that confidence in recall has virtually nothing to do with accuracy, as this situation illustrates so very well.
For example (and this is cited in the New Yorker article linked to above), psychologists rated student’s memories of events that happened to them (the students). The average student scored less than a 3 on a scale of 7. One quarter of the students scored zero. But their confidence came in at an average of 4.17 on a 5 point scale.
I presume Brian Williams had access to the original reports he filed, but did not check them. A simple test for any of us is to see what happens when a person is presented with evidence that their memory is wrong – do they defend the error or correct it?
The reality is that research shows we all have false memories, defend those false memories, and we don’t know it when we do it. Anyone with a deeper interest in the subject would do well to read the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), and that can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423618558&sr=8-1&keywords=mistakes+were+made+but+not+by+me
PS – my solution is to check my facts. My way of doing that is to keep a private journal plus tracks of emails and other things, and check them if there is any question. Keeping close records and checking them is something Brian Williams might want to start doing – and you, too – so you don’t end up where Brian is now.
Although it is valid the idea of false memories I don’t think this explains his actions.
He appears to show delight in his story telling in the video.
Also in this video http://edition.cnn.com/videos/… In reply to the reporters statement that William’s helicopter was one hour behind and on another route Williams apparently replied that that’s the first time he had heard of that.
Thanks for the reply. I’ve never had a TV, so obviously I’m not a big fan or Brian Williams (or any other newscaster or TV show). In other words, I don’t have a lot to go on here as far as Brian Williams. What your comments helped me realize is the difference between duper’s and genuine delight. Obviously one is fake the other other is real, but the observable difference is that duper’s delight will ALWAYS leak signs of deception because they know they are lying, genuine delight will not. I have not seen enough of Brian’s videos to tell which type of delight he is doing, duper’s or genuine. If he’s lying then I would predict observable amounts of deception leakage leading to duper’s delight. If it’s false memories, then I would predict zero leakage, since he would not be aware he’s lying. I’ll be interested to read what others have to say about this very important point.
I wouldn’t go so far as to label him as a sociopath. People, who know him, really think a lot of him. Embellishing is wrong, and it has finally caught up with him. People will never look at him with the same respect, as they did before. He is probably addicted to the highs of having the most exciting stories. Much like Lance was up against, there is a lot of embellishing on news stories, just like the cheating that Lance was exposed to. Some of the war correspondents, covering the Gulf War, were standing in front of a picture. They weren’t even in the country they claimed to be in. Other people doing this doesn’t excuse Mr. Williams, but it explains his actions a little more.
I did pick up on the delight he had in duping people. People can get addicted to all kinds of highs, such as shoplifting, lying, and cheating. People are very human and prone to making poor decisions, at times. Unfortunately, Mr. Williams’ poor decisions has cost him a great deal and, possibly, his career.
The thing that worries me about people in the news reporting false facts is that it influences the way a lot of our people feel about different situations. In cases like war, we need to know the truth, so that we can better make judgments about the dangers we face. We need to know whether our leaders are leading us in the right direction. In cases, like hurricanes, we need to know the true facts. If we have relatives or friends in the area, we may not be able to get thru to them. It would be awful to have someone on the news inflating the devastation that they see. It really isn’t a trivial matter, and we need to be able to rely on our news. I blame the network, along with Bryan, for letting this go on. Maybe this coming to light will serve as a warning to other people in the news.
Agreed. News is not a source of truth, but a source of money for the networks. If it’s not a source of money, the wouldn’t produce it. So it’s not the truth that sells any more, but things like bias, sensationalism, celebrity gossip, and traffic reports. I’ve actually been in discussions with people (some of them are news junkies) who are so biased that it’s virtually impossible for them to separate out the spin from the facts and evidence. This sells advertising dollars, but does not guarantee an informed public.
I would predict that Brian Williams’ situation will cause some news people to be more careful about the facts they report. I’m sure there are many good people in the news business, but the very nature of the business itself does not put truth at its foundation, but rather advertising dollars. As this situation shows, truth has to be a very very long way off course before someone will actually do something, and my guess is the years long delay uncovering what happened here is because he brought in the advertising dollars, and held a position of power that extremely few wanted to challenge.
I know that it will get all of the networks’ attention. Now, we will, most likely, see a number of newscasters exposed for doing the same thing. Usually, when the dominoes start to fall, they take others with them. I doubt we have heard the end of all of Bryan’s fabrications, and I suspect the networks will be in competition in exposing each other. I hope I am wrong, but we will wait and see. Maybe, when it is all over, we will all be a little or a lot more skeptical, but in the end able to trust our reported news more. I hope so. I know that I listen to several different networks on some news stories because of the political slants that each network presents.
Journalists have a responsibility to the public because of the information they provide.
They have their own code of ethics, different by country, but typically like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_ethics_in_media#Society_of_Professional_Journalists:_Code_of_Ethics
One near the bottom is to “Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.”
This is exactly what CNN did and also in this report. http://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/02/09/nr-bpr-tritten-brian-williams-star-and-stripes-interview.cnn/video/playlists/brian-williams-troubles/
It’s a great thing other journalists did in exposing the lies.
“When Williams brings himself into the narrative, however, when he goes on “David Letterman” or “The Daily Show” or babbles to Michael Eisner, the showman overruns the reporter. When you sit around a campfire telling ghost stories, you want the audience to lean forward (the slogan of MSNBC), to be utterly captivated by every detail. The more embellishment the better.”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/10/opinion/brinkley-brian-williams-cronkite/index.html
This articulates the thoughts I had. That being said, I don’t follow Williams enough to know how credible he is when he’s in reporter mode; but I think just because he likes to tell a good story in interviews doesn’t mean he can’t be trusted as a journalist.
People in any position can get too sure of themselves and start making power plays until they, finally, take things too far. We have seen well-known commentators ruin themselves by trying to influence our elections. In a way, these inflated stories are a form of a power play. The one with the biggest story gets the interviews and attention that all the commentators want. I am sure it is a big temptation that they all have to resist.
This writer http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/11/brian-williams-credibility-reporter-iraq-war-2003-helicopter mentions another possible reason for Williams’ story-telling. An anchor in today’s world needs all-action credentials.