Yegomasika
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 21, 2009
- 13,164
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NBC News anchor Brian Williams deserves the public pillory he's currently enduring for having peddled a fabricated war story about himself-thereby joining an ignominious line that ranges from the Gipper to Hillary herself. However, Williams's tall tale has struck an especially raw nerve with a public accustomed to seeing him hold others to the highest standards. So what possessed him?
In case you're late to the story, here's a thumbnail: Over the years, Williams has told a shifting story about the day he flew aboard a U.S. Army helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In later versions, he has said his helicopter was hit and forced down by enemy fire, the version he told last Friday. Called out for his fabrication, Williams came clean, calling the recollections a "mistake" and acknowledging that it was a helicopter flying well ahead of his helicopter that got hit. "I don't know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another," William told Stars and Stripes yesterday.
Williams isn't the only notable who's gotten caught embroidering war stories. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan told the prime minister of Israel that he'd filmed the Nazi death camp as a U.S. Army photographer. Reagan also shared a version of his death camp story with Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. But, as Lou Cannon's March 5, 1984, Washington Post article demonstrated, Reagan couldn't have possibly filmed the death camp because, by his own admission, he never left the country during World War II.
At least twice while campaigning for vice president in 2008, Joe Biden implied that he'd seen some hot action in Afghanistan. Biden said that while riding a U.S. Army helicopter over the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan-"the superhighway of terror" in his parlance-his bird had been "forced down." As it turns out, a snowstorm and not enemy fire was behind the forced landing of Biden's helicopter. John Kerry, who was also aboard the helicopter, later joked, "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it."
Hillary Clinton dispensed her own combat blarney during the 2008 campaign, asserting that during the Bosnia war she and her group landed "under sniper fire" at an airstrip in Tuzla and "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." A week later she fessed up, saying she'd "misspoke." According to U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash, "She never had her head down. … There was no sniper threat that I know of."
Other politicians called out for military-service fudging include Sen. Richard Blumenthal, President George W. Bush, and Sen. Tom Harkin, who bragged about flying non-existent combat air missions in Vietnam. A 2005 Weekly Standard report singled out actors (Tom Mix and Brian Dennehy), a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard (David Duke), and an academic and a clergyman (Joseph Ellis and Major Gary Probst) as inflators or concoctors of their military resumes and a Talking Points Memo piece from 2010 snared even more politicians.
This dishonor roll of politicians disturbs few of us because taking liberties with the truth is their default setting. But we expect higher truth standards from members of the press, right? Brian Williams might not be working as a shoe-leather reporter, but he's as much a journalist as any newspaper rewrite-man. Journalists are paid to be more vigilant than civilians about the stories they tell. Millions listen to Williams because he's sold himself as a truth-teller, not a fabulist. We expect the truth from him, whether he's reading a human-interest piece into NBC's cameras or recounting personal war stories on Dave Letterman's show.
Alas, the human tendency to juice our stories is universal, and it's a temptation that some journalists find impossible to resist. When we tell our personal stories, we tend to add dramatic pauses that will build suspense. In each retelling, we tend to incorporate into it the reactions of the last audience, escalating the drama that got a good reaction, tamping down the events that dragged, and making up stuff to further engage our audiences. We supplement and reshape our stories both subconsciously and deliberately, because there is no public shame like the public shame that follows the telling of a boring tale. If don't think you don't do the same with your favorite stories, ask your spouse or siblings. They'll happily regale you with your entertaining exaggerations.
Journalists adhere to the same traditional story forms that other, more fanciful tellers use, but with the proviso that they don't embellish. This is the journalistic commandment that Williams broke, and you can see it happening in the timeline of his changing stories compiled by CNN. Williams's early tellings are accurate but boring. After a few years and a few tellings, Williams begins to conform to the "juice" model, adding details about the "dangers" he faced as his helicopter was hit. Perhaps Williams thought it was okay for him to embellish because he was off the clock. Sorry, Brian, a journalist is never off the clock, especially when speaking to thousands or millions at a time.
Americans lie about their military records to themselves with such regularity that a couple of years ago Congress passed a law prohibiting such acts of "stolen valor." (Wisely, the Supreme Court struck the law down as injurious to the First Amendment.) For reasons any evolutionary psychology professor can explain to you, everybody wants to be the hero and nobody want to be the coward. Not to get too psychoanalytic on Williams, but maybe he stretched his mundane helicopter story into an exhilarating but false one because he feels guilty about having gone to war the easiest way possible-in the company of well-protected generals.
"The allure of a hero's status can be irresistible," says scholar W. Joseph Campbell, who has written extensively on media myths. "It's a warping, cinematic effect." You'd think that Brian Williams, a mega-successful, handsome, funny, high-status multimillionaire journalist wouldn't need laurels beyond the ones he's already collected. You'd be wrong.
Source: Why Did Brian Williams Lie? - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine
In case you're late to the story, here's a thumbnail: Over the years, Williams has told a shifting story about the day he flew aboard a U.S. Army helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In later versions, he has said his helicopter was hit and forced down by enemy fire, the version he told last Friday. Called out for his fabrication, Williams came clean, calling the recollections a "mistake" and acknowledging that it was a helicopter flying well ahead of his helicopter that got hit. "I don't know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another," William told Stars and Stripes yesterday.
Williams isn't the only notable who's gotten caught embroidering war stories. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan told the prime minister of Israel that he'd filmed the Nazi death camp as a U.S. Army photographer. Reagan also shared a version of his death camp story with Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. But, as Lou Cannon's March 5, 1984, Washington Post article demonstrated, Reagan couldn't have possibly filmed the death camp because, by his own admission, he never left the country during World War II.
At least twice while campaigning for vice president in 2008, Joe Biden implied that he'd seen some hot action in Afghanistan. Biden said that while riding a U.S. Army helicopter over the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan-"the superhighway of terror" in his parlance-his bird had been "forced down." As it turns out, a snowstorm and not enemy fire was behind the forced landing of Biden's helicopter. John Kerry, who was also aboard the helicopter, later joked, "We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do it."
Hillary Clinton dispensed her own combat blarney during the 2008 campaign, asserting that during the Bosnia war she and her group landed "under sniper fire" at an airstrip in Tuzla and "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." A week later she fessed up, saying she'd "misspoke." According to U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash, "She never had her head down. … There was no sniper threat that I know of."
Other politicians called out for military-service fudging include Sen. Richard Blumenthal, President George W. Bush, and Sen. Tom Harkin, who bragged about flying non-existent combat air missions in Vietnam. A 2005 Weekly Standard report singled out actors (Tom Mix and Brian Dennehy), a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard (David Duke), and an academic and a clergyman (Joseph Ellis and Major Gary Probst) as inflators or concoctors of their military resumes and a Talking Points Memo piece from 2010 snared even more politicians.
This dishonor roll of politicians disturbs few of us because taking liberties with the truth is their default setting. But we expect higher truth standards from members of the press, right? Brian Williams might not be working as a shoe-leather reporter, but he's as much a journalist as any newspaper rewrite-man. Journalists are paid to be more vigilant than civilians about the stories they tell. Millions listen to Williams because he's sold himself as a truth-teller, not a fabulist. We expect the truth from him, whether he's reading a human-interest piece into NBC's cameras or recounting personal war stories on Dave Letterman's show.
Alas, the human tendency to juice our stories is universal, and it's a temptation that some journalists find impossible to resist. When we tell our personal stories, we tend to add dramatic pauses that will build suspense. In each retelling, we tend to incorporate into it the reactions of the last audience, escalating the drama that got a good reaction, tamping down the events that dragged, and making up stuff to further engage our audiences. We supplement and reshape our stories both subconsciously and deliberately, because there is no public shame like the public shame that follows the telling of a boring tale. If don't think you don't do the same with your favorite stories, ask your spouse or siblings. They'll happily regale you with your entertaining exaggerations.
Journalists adhere to the same traditional story forms that other, more fanciful tellers use, but with the proviso that they don't embellish. This is the journalistic commandment that Williams broke, and you can see it happening in the timeline of his changing stories compiled by CNN. Williams's early tellings are accurate but boring. After a few years and a few tellings, Williams begins to conform to the "juice" model, adding details about the "dangers" he faced as his helicopter was hit. Perhaps Williams thought it was okay for him to embellish because he was off the clock. Sorry, Brian, a journalist is never off the clock, especially when speaking to thousands or millions at a time.
Americans lie about their military records to themselves with such regularity that a couple of years ago Congress passed a law prohibiting such acts of "stolen valor." (Wisely, the Supreme Court struck the law down as injurious to the First Amendment.) For reasons any evolutionary psychology professor can explain to you, everybody wants to be the hero and nobody want to be the coward. Not to get too psychoanalytic on Williams, but maybe he stretched his mundane helicopter story into an exhilarating but false one because he feels guilty about having gone to war the easiest way possible-in the company of well-protected generals.
"The allure of a hero's status can be irresistible," says scholar W. Joseph Campbell, who has written extensively on media myths. "It's a warping, cinematic effect." You'd think that Brian Williams, a mega-successful, handsome, funny, high-status multimillionaire journalist wouldn't need laurels beyond the ones he's already collected. You'd be wrong.
Source: Why Did Brian Williams Lie? - Jack Shafer - POLITICO Magazine
