My point is clearly meant to be hyperbole. Sorry that was missed be some. I also don’t believe anyone should be fired for saying Brian Williams be fired.
When we are trying to claim equivalence between the right and the left in the media do we have any examples of NBC hosts calling on FOX News to fire people for inaccurate statements?
“Inaccurate statements?”
That’s a very self-serving way of framing the question, isn’t it?
Williams is accused of deliberately fabricating a event that he himself experienced. Lumping that kind of inaccuracy in with more attenuated examples of error is favorable to your point…but not favorable to a useful comparison.
And fir whatever it’s worth, I don’t think the man deliberately lied.
Blumenthal blatantly lied about having served in Vietnam, on numerous occasions, and got elected to the Senate afterwards. Maybe if Brian Williams is fired, he can run for office.
nm
nm
Is there a difference between these two statements? Or are you saying that he’s not guilty of the thing he’s being accused?
Also, who is accusing him? The OP is not accusing him of deliberately fabricating an event.
I think the point of the person you quoted was that the people accusing him of deliberately fabricating an event likely have made inaccurate statements that can be construed as deliberately fabricating events.
There’s a lot of that going on in this thread. If NBC fire Williams then fine, if they don’t(and they have a right not to) then this story will be dangling over the NBC News for the forseeable future. If NBC defenders wish for that to happen then they have to deal with the consequences of NBC news going down a notch or so in the publics estimation.
Also, Williams is not just the anchor of NBC news but also managing editor of its nightly news.
So the vet that he took to that hockey game and made a big event out of didn’t actually do the stuff he was being recognized for then? I thought the whole reason he was getting the shout out from BW and the team was because of his role in bringing BW home safe and sound. Is he as guilty of bullshittery as BW since he knew that the story his accolades were based on were plain BS?
What was the story there?
Exactly. I remember one time on 405 when my car caught fire, flames were streaking from the hood to the back of the car, I had to pull over on the shoulder and get out.
Oh, wait a minute, silly me, I wasn’t inside that car, I was watching this happen from the other lane.
I could have sworn I singed my hair in that incident, dang, these memories just aren’t very reliable.
I see he has voluntarily “taken a break” from his on-air duties “for a few days”. I doubt he will be back any time soon.
Story [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/Brian Williams Suspended Himself From NBC Nightly News Broadcast Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/Brian-Williams-nightly-news-NBC/2015/02/07/id/623410/#ixzz3R6E8u9Up Urgent: Rate Obama on His Job Performance. Vote Here Now!).
I’m willing to give BW a pass on this, chalking it up to a false memory born out of a traumatic situation.
However, it sounds like other stories he’s told (such as regarding his reporting on Hurricane Katrina) are starting to come under scrutiny and when piled up they do start to seem like enjoys tall tales and self-aggrandizement.
If it was just the helicopter story, I’d let it go, but it seems like there could be more to it.
Yes. The first one observes that people are saying Williams deliberately lied. The second says that I personally, don’t think he did.
Have they?
I’m drawing a distinction between a event that one personally experienced and an event for which one is relaying information.
Of course, it may be that there are plenty of examples of Fox News people lying about events they personally witnessed. I don’t know of any, but I certainly don’t reject the possibility.
The dude lied to inflate his street cred. He used this lie to go on Letterman and promote himself.
Is it really that difficult to understand?
Are we to believe he mistook his own helicopter for someone else’s?
What a joke.
But that applies to EVERY commercial television “news” organization.
Reporters are supposed to report the news, not create it. They’re certainly not supposed to be the news for having created it.
He’s not the first to cross the line, and he certainly won’t be the last.
Firing may be a bit much. Maybe a lateral transfer to the mail room.
The problem here is that they use to be part of the news process. They would be in the mix of people checking over information as it came in. Accuracy was considered important.
that was when there were 3 networks that together held all viewership for televised news. When cable came along the same viewership was divided into many networks. That was watered down by the internet. It costs money to report the news and that money disappeared with the dilution of the major news organizations.
Brian Williams is an excellent presenter of the news. He presents an image that harkens back to the days of Cronkite. But he puts his employer in a real bind when that franchised image is tarnished with a bizarre story that didn’t happen. You don’t misremember being shot down.
He wasn’t a News anchor at the time that either this or his Katrina story took place.
Unless they are Hunter S. Thompson and it’s gonzo reporting. 
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you might be making a different point.
You got me there. I don’t watch Fox News.