|
| FILE - This Sept. 11, 2012 file image released by Starpix shows Brian Williams at the Cantor Fitzgerald Charity Day event in New York. NBC "NBC "Nightly News" anchor Williams has admitted he spread a false story about being on a helicopter that came under enemy fire while he was reporting in Iraq in 2003. Williams said on "Nightly News" on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015, he was in a helicopter following other aircraft, one of which was hit by ground fire. His helicopter was not hit. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- NBC News anchor Brian Williams found himself the story Thursday, his
credibility seriously threatened because he claimed - falsely - that he
had been in a helicopter hit by a grenade during the Iraq war.
NBC
News officials would not say whether their top on-air personality would
face disciplinary action. The "Nightly News" anchor for just over a
decade, Williams had become an online punching bag overnight.
Tweets
with the hashtag (hash)BrianWilliamsMemories joked that he blew up the
Death Star, saved someone from a polar bear and flew with Wonder Woman
in her invisible helicopter. Photoshopped pictures showed Williams
reporting from the moon, and riding shotgun with O.J. Simpson in his
Ford Bronco.
"How could you expect anyone who
served in the military to ever see this guy onscreen again and not feel
contempt? How could you expect anyone to believe he or the broadcast he
leads has any credibility?" wrote critic David Zurawik of the Baltimore
Sun.
Williams apologized Wednesday for telling
the story a week earlier during a "Nightly News" tribute to a veteran
he had befriended during a 2003 reporting trip to Iraq. Before
expressing his regrets on the air, Williams did so online and in an
interview with the newspaper Stars & Stripes.
He
speculated online that constant viewing of video showing him inspecting
the damaged helicopter "and the fog of memory over 12 years, made me
conflate the two, and I apologize."
His story had morphed through the years.
Shortly
after the incident, Williams had described on NBC how he was traveling
in a group of helicopters forced down in the Iraq desert. On the ground,
he learned the Chinook in front of him "had almost been blown out of
the sky"; he showed a photo of the aircraft with a gash from a
rocket-propelled grenade.
The NBC crew and military officials accompanying them spent three days in the desert, kept aground by a sandstorm.
But
in a 2008 blog post, Williams said that his helicopter had come under
fire from what appeared to be Iraqi farmers with RPGs. He said a
helicopter in front of his had been hit.
Then,
in a 2013 appearance on David Letterman's "Late Show," Williams said
that two of the four helicopters he was traveling with had been hit by
ground fire, "including the one I was in."
"No kidding?" Letterman interjected.
Williams described making a quick, hard landing in the middle of the desert.
"I have to treat you now with renewed respect," Letterman said. "That's a tremendous story."
Williams'
story was first questioned in posts to the "Nightly News" Facebook
page. It's a touchy topic: Members of the military who are wounded or
who come under enemy fire consider themselves members of a special kind
of brotherhood and don't like people who try to intrude, said retired
U.S. Army Col. Pete Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio
State University.
"It smacks of stolen valor," Mansoor said - an offense that Williams specifically denied in his online apology.
Rich
Krell, who piloted the helicopter Williams was flying in that day, told
CNN Thursday that there were three helicopters in formation, not four.
Although the helicopter in front of Williams was hit by the grenade,
Krell said that all three aircraft were hit by small arms fire.
He seemed to take Williams' account in stride. "After a while, with combat stories, you just go `whatever,'" Krell said.
Many
people have embellished war stories, in the local tavern or on a
national stage. During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton was derided
for saying she came under sniper fire when, as first lady, she arrived
at a military base in Bosnia. Her representatives said she had
misspoken.
Williams' immediate issue is
whether or not people believe his apology, a particular problem in an
industry where credibility is crucial.
"It's
pretty difficult to believe," Mansoor said. "I remember every time I was
under fire in Iraq, especially if your vehicle is an aircraft that's
been hit. That's something that gets seared into your memory for all
time."
The New York Daily News labeled his
apology a fake. "So what if it was 12 years ago," wrote TV editor Don
Kaplan. "I remember getting hit in the head with a rock by a kid in the
third grade."
Williams has an out-sized image
at NBC News: the blue-collar Jersey guy and witty celebrity who "slow
jams" the news with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight" show. He
hasn't had credibility problems before and he consistently leads in the
ratings, making him an outlier at a network where the "Today" show and
"Meet the Press" have slipped from their lofty perch as rating
champions.
It's up to NBC News President
Deborah Turness to decide whether Williams will be punished in any way.
She has the reputations of both her most well-known personality and the
news division as a whole to consider.
"I feel a
little let down and I imagine that's where a lot of the (online) anger
is coming from," said Jason Maloni, a crisis public relations expert at
Levick Strategic Communications and a regular "Nightly News" viewer. He
isn't sure whether NBC should sanction Williams, but he doesn't want to
see the anchor in a war zone anytime soon.
Zurawik
of the Baltimore Sun wrote that if credibility means anything to NBC
News, Williams should be out of his job by the end of the week.
But Jane Hall, a communications professor at American University, said she believed Williams' apology should be accepted.
"It
seems to me to be an honest mistake of conflating the two accounts,"
Hall said. "I don't think he has been known as anything other than a
straight shooter."
