Media critics are not entirely satisfied with NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ apology for mistakes he made in describing his experience aboard a helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Williams has made multiple apologies for his most recent version of the story, in which he said the helicopter he was on was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. But the NBC anchors’ accounting of what took place has varied over the past decade, and numerous individuals have contested his version of events.
Crew members who were present during the attack claim that the helicopter on which Williams rode was nowhere near the attack. Yet the pilot of the aircraft on which the newsman flew claims that the helicopter did take small arms fire, but was not hit in the RPG attack.
CNN’s Brian Stelter criticized Williams’ response on Thursday morning and expressed the need for additional answers.
“This just does not pass the smell test. You may want to believe this is an innocent mistake, but how could someone, how could anyone conflate being on a helicopter that did not take fire and being on a helicopter that did take fire?” Stelter asked on CNN’s “New Day.” “I don’t think this apology went far enough because he’s not explaining the rest of what’s happened.”
Stelter added that the controversy is a “serious blow” to Williams’ credibility as a journalist.
Later on Thursday morning, after Stelter interviewed the pilot of the helicopter on which Williams flew, Stelter said that employees at NBC were not satisfied with Williams’ apology.
“This is troubling for Brian Williams. There was that apology last night. I don’t think anyone I’ve talked to at NBC was satisfied with it. They don’t feel it went far enough. People at the network are openly wondering if there’s going to be some disciplinary action to be taken against him,” Stelter said. “I’ve been told there are no plans. But this is a story growing as we went along.”
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple called on NBC news to investigate Williams and the events that took place in 2003.
“The fact that personnel aside from Williams knew that his statements on these events were erroneous should prompt an internal probe as to how these falsehoods circulated so freely,” he wrote.
Wemple also questioned why members of the NBC crew who flew with Williams in 2003 have not come forward about his embellishments.
“Why did it take pushback from ‘some brave men and women in the air crews,’ however? Do these folks have to fight our wars and fact-check NBC News?” he asked. “Where were Williams’s crew members, who surely knew that Williams had either ‘conflated’ his Chinook with another Chinook — his explanation — or was using the passage of time to embellish his own exploits — another explanation. And what of other NBC News employees who worked on the story?”
Speaking of the American MSM and mistakes made in and about Iraq: Rock throwers, meet glass houses.
I’d rather see the bright light of media shine on media all the time and not just one measly anchorman hounded back to his original prompter operator job.
“Liberal” Brian Williams lies about 1 thing: pitchforks and torches.
Faux News deliberately and DEMONSTRABLY lies all day, every day about everything: Silence.
IOKIYAR
Based on what I have read Williams did screw up, but the chopper he was riding in did receive some small arms fire and another chopper was attacked by an RPG… Unless these so called media critics are combat veterans I am not going to pay any attention.
This is such a non-story that it surely says that it must be a slow news week for this to be a prime time discussion item. The pilot of the aircraft that Williams was on said that the aircraft came under fire. OK, this should be the end of the story, except if you WANT to make it a prime time event. So it wasn’t an RPG attack. SO WHAT??!!!?? One of the other aircraft in a flight of 4 did take an RPG hit. When you are getting a story third hand on the fly from the person who received the attack to the pilot to the flight engineer to Mr. Williams, it is very, very easy to get the story screwed up. Especially 12 years post facto, I can easily see how the high tension environment of combat playing who said what and what actually happened is a very easy differential and as long as Mr. Williams acknowledged the error and corrected it, it’s all good.
I would be willing to bet that none of these big, loudmouthed “media critics” (God, is that ever a non sequitur) was ever was an actual combatant in a real combat situation. If they had been, they would know that I can talk to my buddies from Vietnam who were cheek by jowl beside me in a firefight and their memory of the event so radically differs from mine that I often wonder if were were in the same war. But I know we were. And I also know that your perception of what was happening is fixed by so many things (eg., how frightened you were, what your field of fire was like, how frightened you were, whether you were a small arms bearer or a heavy machine gun operator, how frightened you were, which side of the formation you were on, how frightened you were, if you were behind poor cover or had a good bunker (foxhole) to shoot from, etc…did I mention how frightened you were?) that stories are easily screwed up, even by people with no reason to brag or engage in self-aggrandizement.
It’s the jackasses who weren’t there or were in some REMF job who go on and on about how other people did or didn’t do certain things (REMF is infantryman lingo for those people with the nice safe jobs back at base camp…Rear Echelon Mother F**kers). The pilot was there. He said they came under fire. He said that Mr. Williams misunderstood that one of the other aircraft was hit by an RPG not their aircraft. As a civilian, Mr. Williams would have no idea what it sounds like when an RPG strike occurs. As one who has been in a helicopter under fire, an AK-47 round hitting the aircraft sounds like the world is ending to someone who hasn’t heard it before. After a while, you get where they are just background noise and all you are listening for is that the turbine engine keeps screaming. End of story. A civilian not knowing what in the Hell he was hearing from deep inside a windowless Chinook? Quite understandable. And something that someone who hasn’t been there would understand.
Get over it, boys, and try to find something important to write about.