We have cases of surprising false memory in completely trivial, non-stressful cases. We have cases of surprising false memory in hugely traumatic cases. Even if trauma or stress have any relevance here at all, I think the spectrum is covered.
The ‘false memory’ stuff is completely ridiculous IMO. The strange psychology it shows if anything is people determined to defend Williams because they perceive him to be on their team politically, or at least a blow to the prestige of their team or a win for the opposing team if he’s disgraced.
None of the analogies offered for real memory problems (of non-cognitively impaired people! I assume that’s not what NBC wants in their anchor chair…) hold any water. People convinced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit first of all are generally marginal intellects or outright cognitively impaired, and anyway under extreme pressure to do exactly that: say they did this thing. Nor is the analogy to the other CH-47 pilot who thought he remembered Williams riding in his a/c of much value either. That was a relatively unimportant thing to him at the time (presumably, celebrity and all, when on combat missions), and doesn’t itself reflect on him in any particular way (Williams was on his helicopter or not, so what?).
Williams OTOH is and has been telling a story that makes him look like a bigger, more genuine figure. That’s been known throughout human history, telling a tall tale, or in less flattering terms, self aggrandizing lying.
I don’t personally care much if NBC News (further) reduces its credibility by keeping Williams as their top on air ‘serious’ news guy. Actually a lot of the people defending Williams should be more concerned about that I would have thought. No doubt they lean left in general, and it’s their team’s media making itself look like even more of a joke than it already is by keeping Williams, especially with this ludicrous excuse of ‘false memory’.
There is a difference between a false memory and an accurate memory that is mistaken. Several comments on this thread have alluded to the possibility that BW was so distracted by the noise and commotion that upon landing and hearing talk of a chopper being hit, he mistakenly believed that he had been under fire. But his original reports described his flight as coming in after the bird that was hit. Nobody planted a false memory by suggesting to BW that he had been under fire. At some point in his own mind, the story changed. I have no doubt that re-remembering and re-telling the story has formed a solid false memory, but when the story first changed in his head from that of observer to participant, it was a deliberate act.
Given the controversy about his reporting on Hurricane Katrina, I’m feeling less inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. One screw-up, and I can see it as some weird memory trick. But two screw-ups in the same way, and whether it’s deliberate dishonesty or some sort of neurosis, he’s coming across as an unreliable narrator. If I were his boss, I’d be wishing him godspeed at this point.
Network TV news is no longer the super-prestigious gig it once was, and since I very rarely watch the NBC nightly news, it makes little or no difference to me as a viewer whether he keeps his job.
But just because so many conservatives are taking pleasure in Williams’ squirming, it doesn’t follow that liberals should rally around him.
In my mind, the Katrina story is far more damning than the helicopter story. It’s easier for me to forgive a lie meant to make Williams himself look brave and cool than to forgive a story that painted a false picture of what was going on in New Orleans.
In any case, Williams is very replaceable. If I ran NBC News, I’d definitely kick him downstairs.
I pretty much agree with astorian. In addition to what I said above, who even watches network news anymore? I know Williams mostly as a funny guest on The Daily Show and from Youtube Fallon rap videos. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, or fail to give it to him, with very little concern about how it affects actual news (or the insidious Liberal Media Conspiracy).
About twenty million Americans every day. Despite declines, it is still the primary or sole source of national and international news for plenty of people.
He is no Liberal and this Lib has despised him since Election Night 2002.
he’s got 6 months off to work on his memory.
He’ll find things very different when he gets back. Six months is a lifetime in television terms. For a start he’ll never have the same power and authority at NBC, this will be hard to live down. And how many viewers will be willing to give him the same trust as they did before?
This was a tough call for NBC. I think it was the appropriate call.
I think Dr. Johnson nailed this one:
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”
So will one of the other networks grab him?
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/05/blumenthal_reagan_and_the_big.html
Here’s a link which deals with the concentration camp story. Admittedly it is a conservative source, but I would like to see evidence of a direct quote from Reagan on the issue rather than through a reporter years afterwards. It is easy for a reporter to become mixed up between Reagan saying he saw/saved unedited footage and Reagan saying he “took” the actual footage.
Who cares? He wasn’t reporting on a story; he was bragging about how brave and tough he is, and got carried away and made up some BS.
I don’t get the notion about the hit to the credibility of NBC. How naïve can one be? I have exactly the same measure of confidence in NBC now that I did before Williams started bloviating about things that never happened.
TV isn’t real. TV is there to tell you a story so you will sit thru the commercials. That includes TV news. They’re always lying, but they aren’t always telling the truth either, especially when something other than the truth makes a better story.
Regards,
Shodan
I have to say I’m really surprised by some of the comments here.
This is yet another case of a guy who wants to be viewed as the smartest guy in the room, and then can’t remember if his helicopter almost got shot down by an RPG! Almost got blown out of the f’ing sky! This happens to politicians (both sides) all the time and I don’t know why they get a pass.
I have a question for those in the “I think he just misremembered” camp. If a car flips on the highway and hits a guardrail, and the people in the car somehow survive. And you are driving down the same highway an hour later and are a rubbernecker and see the accident. Do you really think 10 years later you’ll misremember and think you were in the car that flipped? Are you kidding me?
In the military I’ve have two fairly close brushes with death or at least pretty serious injury. I remember both like they were yesterday. I’ve also arrive on the scene shortly after other incidents. I’ve never “misremembered” or “conflated” the two events. Not even close.
I don’t care if he’s suspended, fired or if nothing happens to him. But it seems to me you can pick one of two things: he either made it up, (and some other stories apparently) and you have a news guy you can’t always believe because he likes to make stuff up, or you think he just 'misremembers" sometimes, and now you have a news guy who can’t keep his facts straight. Not sure either is a great deal.
This story might have played out differently 30 years ago. But with 24hr news channels, the internet, and social media… it’s a changed world.
There’s two ways to think about the hit to the credibility:
- I trust NBC less now.
- I trust them the same, but there are a lot of morons out there who’ll trust them less.
spifflog, your analogy about the flipping car is a lousy analogy. Imagine instead someone driving through a dangerous section of two during riots, and there’s a ton of noise, and a vehicle that went out earlier is hit by a bullet and maybe people are talking about that, and then you get out of your car, and then you see the vehicle that was hit, and it has bullet holes, and later you get confused and think your vehicle was hit. That’s a much closer analogy.
I can not talk for others, but I have seen many on the left that are not really defending him, they are only pointing out that one should not assume malice when incompetency will do, and there is the mistaken idea from some from the right that the left is defending him because he is part of "our team"when the mainstream is not; in reality many on the left are only being fair to him by assuming that this was not a malicious thing, but that is not a great defense once you realize that the other choice is not really supporting him either.
He most likely demonstrated incompetency so at least in my case I do not shed a tear for him.
I’m not going to miss Williams, but I’m going to miss Jon Stewart*. 
- For also pointing out how only now a guy from the mainstream media that was incompetent on the lead to the war of Iraq and during the war gets it.
That’s it. He’s confused and “misremembered.” :dubious:
There is a sports talk radio host (of all people) who has this type of thing nailed. He’s says you can’t act like the smartest guy in the room, and then want to “be confused” when you want to be. He calls it being “conveniently dumb” and I think “we” get what we deserve when we fall for it, whether it be Clinton (either one) or Reagan or whomever.
Or Baghdad Bob. That guy was a laugh riot.