NBC's Brian Williams Goes Down in a "Fog of Memory"

This isn't an exaggerated memory; it's a lie to get glory and attention. Yuck.

Reminds me of Paul Ryan's claim that he ran a 2 hour 50 minute marathon, when in fact he ran just over four hours. Those of us who've trained for and run marathons know this is not the kind of thing you make a mistake about. (And in context, it's clear he didn't simply misspeak -- he was bragging about the time being fast, which would be true for a 2:50 marathon, but not a 4 hour marathon, at least for a man Ryan's age at that time. Not to mention he missed the four hour mark by about a minute and a half, which, trust me, is the kind of thing runners forever kick themselves for.) So stupid, because it's very easy to find someone's marathon time.

I suppose lies like Ryan's, Wiliams', and Clinton's don't really hurt anyone, but they gross me out.

Alpha Echo said:

With Clinton...I could see where you may think you're under an attack if you're in a hostile area that is noisy and chaotic, where the sound of a car backfiring could easily be mistaken for a gun shot.

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Um, no. There's no room for doubt here. The comedian Sinbad and Sheryl Crow--and others--were on the same plane as Clinton. Her account is complete bunk.

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss.

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She lied to build up her image and she got caught doing it.

Regarding Williams, while there remain problems with his story regardless, The pilot of the craft says actually, they did take fire.

Regarding Clinton, meh. Someone may have mentioned the possibility of snipers to her at some point or given her a security briefing. Fortunately, it didn't materialize. Clearly, she's the first politician to ever exaggerate an experience

raburrell said:

Clearly, she's the first politician to ever exaggerate an experience

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Pretty sure no one suggested any such thing. But the fact of the matter is, she told a big whopper. What she said happened didn't happen. She lied, she didn't exaggerate.

Again, meh. She was trying to make herself sound cooler than she is. Politician.

Not a moment she's proud of, I'm sure, but as something uniquely disqualifying, no. Surely if one is looking for such things, one can find better reasons.

raburrell said:

Again, meh. She was trying to make herself sound cooler than she is. Politician.

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The government we get, we deserve.

Not a moment she's proud of, I'm sure, but as something uniquely disqualifying, no. Surely if one is looking for such things, one can find better reasons.

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*shrug*

You of course don't need to see it as disqualifying at all. No one needs to as a matter of course.

But it amuses me, the difficulty people have with saying a plain truth, i.e. that Hillary Clinton lied.

Hey, I like Brian Williams, but I have no problem saying he lied, because I think it clear that he did. Conflation smation.

A politician lied? Surely not. Never.



I grew up with a show called Drop The Dead Donkey, and a character called Damien Day (worth checking out on YouTube). In the 1990s things like this were being satirised on UK TV and now I'm struggling to be surprised or outraged.

Where'd you get the impression I have a problem saying she lied? She did. I just don't happen to find it a particularly notable one. Nobody died and the correction she issued on it is approximately seven years old at this point. Unless were going to start bringing up everyone else was never told of war story that turned out to be a fishtail, it seems rather nakedly partisan to bring it up. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it is what it is.

raburrell said:

Regarding Williams, while there remain problems with his story regardless, The pilot of the craft says actually, they did take fire.

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Either way Williams lied.

But other crew members disagree:
From Stars and Stripes:

"The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said."

http://www.rickey.org/brian-williams-lied-2003-iraq-war-story-soldiers-protest-video/275986/

raburrell said:

Where'd you get the impression I have a problem saying she lied?

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From you saying she "exaggerated her experience."

But I guess I find the comparison worthwhile simply because the two--Williams and Clinton--told the same sort of lie. And the question of whether or not this is a firing offence--with regard to Williams--has been raised.

Per Don and Diane, I think it odd that many accept this stuff from a politician, but want to hold others to a different standard.

I worry a lot more about "the government we deserve "when it involves things like harassing children who want to use the bathroom and denying vaccine science than I do someone getting caught up in their own hubris. Ymmv

Gregg said:

Either way Williams lied.

But other crew members disagree:
From Stars and Stripes:

"The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said."

http://www.rickey.org/brian-williams-lied-2003-iraq-war-story-soldiers-protest-video/275986/

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Well, now we're getting into territory where the military personnel's memories are not agreeing with each other. At which point, I think perhaps it's time give Williams a break since he's not the only one with a faulty memory about the incident.

robeiae said:

. . .
But I guess I find the comparison worthwhile simply because the two--Williams and Clinton--told the same sort of lie. And the question of whether or not this is a firing offence--with regard to Williams--has been raised.

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Clearly he's no Walter Cronkite. I've almost abandoned the News (& horrible drug-pushing commercials) at dinner time, but Williams now appears "untrustworthy", IMHO. Agree that Hil's deception was pathetic.

Chris P said:

This story just depresses me. It seems that all the other anchors (especially on cable) do is yell at each other and try to get other people to yell at each other. .

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Damn, I miss the news.

This could easily be a job-ender for Brian Williams. If so, he earned it. Damn stupid thing to do, period.

caw

blacbird said:

This could easily be a job-ender for Brian Williams. If so, he earned it. Damn stupid thing to do, period.

caw

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Yes.

Especially after he had initially reported that it was a helicopter well ahead of him that had been shot at.

Lyv said:

Possibly. Maybe even probably. But we don't know. As has been said, memory can be fickle. Stress and trauma and even guilt can play with it. So, no, that's not the bottom line. It might be. Or he might have said something he believed to be true but was not. I don't call that lying.

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umm .. I've got a bridge in Brooklyn ....

PorterStarrByrd said:

umm .. I've got a bridge in Brooklyn ....

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umm...sell it to someone else. As I said, I don't know if he is lying. I said he may be, that he probably is. But I am not stating it as fact, because I don't know and neither do you. I see people saying they're disappointed because they like Brian Williams. I'm not one of them. But I don't know for sure for reasons I have already mentioned. Snark away if that's your thing.

I think some of y'all are being a bit too harsh on Williams. Memory is a very malleable, unreliable mechanism. As Steven Novella once said, "...you have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under."

We all fall victim to false memories. None of our memories is very accurate, either. Without getting into too much detail, when it comes to long-term memory, there are kind of two different types: those encoded by activation in the hippocampus and those encoded by activation of the amygdala. The ones from the hippocampus are "normal" memories. The amygdalar ones are "flash bulb" memories; those from emotional experiences (the same type of memories that terrorize PTSD sufferers).

The emotional memories can be pretty reliable (at least the major details. The periphery, not so much). The hippocampal memories are subject to much revision that happens below our conscious awareness.

Why am I rambling on about all of this? Because our brain rewrites our hippocampal memories over time as new narratives are spun. Remember your 6th birthday party in vivid detail? No you don't. Remember most of the details of your first day in college? No you don't. You just don't. Your memory doesn't work that way.

So, say you were in a helicopter and one of the ones ahead of you got shot down by a rocket. Maybe you didn't even see it happen but you know all of the details surrounding it (because, say, you're a reporter and it's your job to know them). And say the one you were in actually got shot at too (as the pilot of Williams' helicopter stated today) but just by a few bullets and not a rocket.

Over the span of 12 years, as you infrequently retell the story, the memories of your helicopter getting shot at start to blend with your knowledge of the other chopper getting shot down. Eventually, as years pass and your memory fades and distorts, it all gets mashed together. One day, you're discussing a similar situation and *bam!* that memory pops up...in its mangled, mashed up, inaccurate glory...and you recall the two memories as one narrative.

I can't for sure know that happened in Williams' case but it is a very likely, very believable scenario. In fact, false memories such as this have been easily implanted in people in clinical settings (and, unfortunately, in real-world settings too). Grown adults, for example, remembering getting lost in a department store as a little kid...when that NEVER happened. People "remembering" parental abuse that also never happened. False memories are quite common and quite easy to succumb to.

I know that many people are wanting to dog pile on him and call him a liar (as if you actually know) and say ridiculous things like he should be fired. But as I doubt that anyone here has highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), let he/she who has NEVER misremembered something, cast the first stone.

It's time to mention the to whom Brian Williams owes the biggest apology:

Reporter Bob Woodruff, who was damn near killed several years ago, riding in a convoy in Iraq, when his vehicle was blown up by an IED. Woodruff was the heir-apparent major news anchor for one of the networks (I disremember which), and he spent a long time in rehabilitation for head injuries, which involved replacing a big part of his skull with plates. He has never returned to prominence in the news reporting business.

Yeah, Brian. You go, buddy.

Please. Maybe FOX will have you.

caw

Yeah, I'm not automatically willing to call Williams a liar either. This memory expert agrees:

Even people with superior memory seem to be susceptible to misleading information that is presented after the original event.

In one of our studies, about 20 percent of our participants generated false memories of an event when something false was suggested. [For instance, if Patihis mentioned video footage of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on September 11, one in five participants said they remembered seeing it. No such footage exists.] If we repeated the false suggestion many times over a period of weeks or months, I am sure an even larger percentage would develop a false memory.

In the case of Brian Williams, that misleading information may have been in the form of seeing the footage of him and his film crew examining the damage of the helicopter that was actually hit, and seeing it over and over again.

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The article goes into some interesting detail about how memory errors can form.

Sorta surprised a group of writers are so certain a deliberate lie on Williams part is the only way this could've happened, especially given the uncertainty in various other accounts of those who were there.

I agree - the fact that the pilot of the chopper Williams was on confirmed that they were shot at and hit by small arms fire makes that scenario quite credible. I think, given what memory experts are saying, and the fact that some of the account was actually accurate, people are being way too harsh on Williams at this point.

Sorry, clint, we tend to agree on a lot of things, but this right now ain't one. I did Vietnam. You know what happens when you get endangered by any kind of enemy fire?

You effing remember every goddamn moment, every detail. Time slows down. You remember the freckle on the back of the neck of the guy sitting ahead of you in the chopper.

Brian Williams had no reason to make this claim other than to garner a veneer of reportorial street cred. I am not purchasing this product.

caw

I've found an artist's depiction of the event:
http://luckovich.blog.ajc.com/2015/...et-of-truth/?ecmp=ajc_social_twitter_2014_sfp

clintl said:

I agree - the fact that the pilot of the chopper Williams was on confirmed that they were shot at and hit by small arms fire makes that scenario quite credible. I think, given what memory experts are saying, and the fact that some of the account was actually accurate, people are being way too harsh on Williams at this point.

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Not so:

"I was the pilot in command of the flight that carried Brian Williams into Iraq in March 2003.
The mission was to deliver bridges to the Objective Rams region in order to support our ground-force advancement. We were briefed that we would be operating forward of the line of troops and that the Objective was unsecure.
We were a flight of two, and I was the rear aircraft. Our flight to Objective Rams was uneventful, with the exception of a desert dust storm that caused deteriorating conditions not suitable for flight."

http://pagesix.com/2015/02/05/pilot-of-brian-williams-flight-all-that-hit-us-was-dust/