For those who don’t follow television news (you’re probably more informed that way, ironically), anchor Brian Williams has recently involved himself in a bit of a funk. While covering the Iraq War in 2003, Williams claimed that a helicopter in front of the one he was on came under enemy fire and was almost blown up by an rocket-propelled grenade. He knew of this only after being told upon landing.
However, Williams’ account has changed over the years. At varying times in the past, he has claimed that every helicopter came under fire, that he knew the attack was happening in the moment, that he “looked down the tube of an RPG” and, most recently, that his own helicopter was forced down by the RPG.
Much of Williams’ career is now subject to a credibility gap, especially his sensational reporting of Hurricane Katrina. He claimed he found a dead body floating outside his hotel, despite the fact that the French Quarter he was staying in hardly received any flooding. He also claimed that armed gangs broke into his hotel, despite the fact that security conditions were high enough to prevent criminals from entering. Furthermore, he’s probably lying about his supposed case of dysentery, unless he somehow managed to slip under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s radar, and remember, this is Brian freaking Williams we’re talking about.
And this isn’t the half of it. Fact checkers have also noticed discrepancies in Williams’ coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war. It just may well be that the man is a pathological liar. Kind of reminds me of one of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson quotes: “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
No wonder people have virtually no trust in the press. A Gallup poll in June 2014 found that only 12 percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in newspapers. For television and internet news, those figures were a disappointing 10 and 8 percent, respectively.
In our post-Vietnam War America, most institutions lack public trust, but the press has been hit the hardest and that’s potentially disastrous. The Founding Fathers knew how crucial an unrestrained and free press is. The press is a check on government as much as the executive is to the legislature and vice versa — the fourth estate, so to speak.
But when the press lies, they’re powerless. Williams said it best himself, “integrity is all we have,” and, I’m sorry, but this guy has no integrity left. And that sucks because I like Brian Williams. Granted, he’s not the Walter Cronkite for millennials (nobody is, and nobody will be), but in a digital era where the bar for journalism has been set particularly low, he wasn’t terrible.
At least, you know, until we found out he’s been lying. Brian Williams is literally the Bill Cosby of journalism now: way beyond redemption. And you can’t even enjoy his old stuff.
