The Brian Williams Debacle

[iluvatar5150]

After Dan Rather was exposed as having completely fabricated not only the story but the evidence used to support the story attacking George Bush and his service in the National Guard, his brethren within the media made up some award and held a grand gala to present it to him.

Which award was that?

I expect much the same here, because as the liberal/progressive crowd has proven over and over and over again, lies told, no matter how gross or pathetic or obvious, only matter when they can be used in an attempt to destroy a conservative Republican.

I guess conservatives have purged their ranks of all of the birthers, then, eh?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

oh please, you think Fox news never lies? honestly, what Brian did was tame by comparison!

Spare us...

It's like a conservative can never make a criticism anymore without someone piping up to say that "fox news lies" or "Bush did it too", etc...

How about actually debating the topic at hand?


Sorry, not trying to lash out at you personally, it's just that this is the 4th post like this I've read in 24 hours where someone has chimed in and offered nothing more than a comment about Fox news.


It's almost digressed to the point where a conservative could start a thread about a car dealership ripping people off, and a handful of people would reply with "Oh, well you think Fox news has never done anything dishonest?!?!"

 

[iluvatar5150]

Spare us...

It's like a conservative can never make a criticism anymore without someone piping up to say that "fox news lies" or "Bush did it too", etc...

How about actually debating the topic at hand?


Sorry, not trying to lash out at you personally, it's just that this is the 4th post like this I've read in 24 hours where someone has chimed in and offered nothing more than a comment about Fox news.


It's almost digressed to the point where a conservative could start a thread about a car dealership ripping people off, and a handful of people would reply with "Oh, well you think Fox news has never done anything dishonest?!?!"

Everybody is making the comparison to Fox, because the OP specifically asked what would happen if Fox did something like this. In fact, the comment to which you're responding originally quoted the OP's question, "How would this same story be viewed if the person involved was say, Sean Hannity of Fox News?"

 

[Sistrin]

Hannity is more credible when he's known to lie and distort constantly?

Media Matters posting a list of comments they wish to categorize as lies hardly constitutes evidence Hannity lies and distorts. I read over the list reference and cited two of them. The rest fall under the same umbrella, the list created by someone paid to sit and watch every moment of Hannity's show parsing every comment so Media Matters can tell their audience what they want to hear.

Recently he's been spreading the old myth about Global Cooling in the 70s...

The myth is when the AGW doom crowd attempts to deny the Global Cooling scare promoted in the 1970's.

Another Ice Age?

Monday, June 24, 1974

Source: Another Ice Age? - TIME

The Cooling World

Newsweek, April 28, 1975

Source: Newsweek on the cooling world

From Scientific American and a story concerning the writer of the Newsweek piece, quote:

"Some climatologists predicted the trend would continue, inching the earth toward the colder averages of the "Little Ice Age" from the 16th to 19th centuries."

Source: How the "Global Cooling" Story Came to Be - Scientific American

From an article dated January 26th, 1970, quote:

"In fact, should a new Ice Age descend upon the earth in the centuries immediately ahead man, or at least those as yet unasphyziated survivors from his present billions, may have to acknowledge he brought it on himself."

...

The result has been a measurable lowering of average temperatures...

Source: The Owosso Argus-Press - Google News Archive Search

The claim was promoted on television as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGB5MMIAVA

The Chicago Tribune ran this story in 1975:

The Ice Age cometh: the system that controls our climate

Source: Archives: Chicago Tribune

This from Science News:

Climate Change: Chilling Possibilities

Link: https://www.sciencenews.org/sites/default/files/8983

It was written about in books:

The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?

http://www.amazon.com/Cooling-Has-Next-Already-Begun/dp/013172312X

Newspaper articles:

Little Ice Age

Severe Winters and Cool Summers Ahead

The Calgary Herald - Google News Archive Search

Another:

Eugene Register-Guard - Google News Archive Search

Hawked by the New York Times:

Scientist Ask Why World Climate Is Changing: Major Cooling May Be Ahead

Link: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ny-times-1975-05-21.pdf

It was even promoted by Climate Scientist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsdWTBNyvX0#t=25

And trumpeted by the BBC:

"The Ice Age is due now anytime..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtyM9mPbMUo#t=15

Then of course the news rags of the day chimed in:

But hey it is an inconvenient truth for anyone to remember how science promoted global cooling back in the day...interferes with advancing the current agenda.

...last year it was his support of Craven Bundy and who can forget the Obamacare hatchet job where the participants outright lied.

Johnathan Gruber exposed the lies of Obamacare.

 

[abysmul]

I can't imagine how any normal person could click on the first post of this thread and read it straight through and not laugh.

The theme seems to be: someone we agree with politically got caught doing something wrong so we're not going to talk about that, but instead we will point out how other people do things wrong too!


We're rubber and you are glue! Neener Neener Neener! Our liars are better people than your liars, because our liars are doing it for the good of us all!


Disgusting.

 

[Sistrin]

That's not actually true - Rather did not fabricate the story or the evidence, but he failed spectacularly in his fact-checking.

Again with sympathy for the devil.

Rather fabricated the story based on documents which were very quickly proven to have also been fabricated. He was attempting to smear and demean President Bush on the eve of the 2004 election, an old tactic employed during every election cycle by members of either the left or the liberal news media. The Report of the Independent Review Panel proved the documents were forged, yet to this day Rather still lives in delusion and insist they were authentic.

The entire affair was a lie, promoted by Rather in an attempt to influence the outcome of the election. No wonder his peers lauded him.

This ruined his career and a couple of others. However, he did have a distinguished career before that debacle and it was for that he was honored.

Rather was always a leftist promoting liberal/progressive ideals. You can believe that distinguished, but I don't.

Bush is a conservative Republican?

Can you see from left field?

William's lie had nothing to do with destroying anyone. Um, Rather lost his career (we don't know yet what the fallout for Williams will be) while habitual liars on the right continue in theirs as "commentators". How do you explain that?

Williams lie had to do with destroying himself, and he should have known that. However given the sphere he operates within, it is most probable he knew all along no real consequence would come of his lies if his lies were indeed exposed.

What habitual liars would those be? Those Media Matters targets? If the left had any valid example against Hannity or Limbaugh, they would have pushed it long before now.

That is evidence that they trusted him, not that they will not be angered at the betrayal of their trust.

Really? You have any evidence to support that?

Which award was that?

Please...

I guess conservatives have purged their ranks of all of the birthers, then, eh?

Pitiable attempt at deflection.

 

[MachZer0]

Which award was that?



I guess conservatives have purged their ranks of all of the birthers, then, eh?

Interesting that we're talking about two leftists who remembered things that didn't happen (Brian and Hillary) and you bring up birtherism which started in the Hillary camp. We may be seeing a pattern with Hillary at least

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Everybody is making the comparison to Fox, because the OP specifically asked what would happen if Fox did something like this. In fact, the comment to which you're responding originally quoted the OP's question, "How would this same story be viewed if the person involved was say, Sean Hannity of Fox News?"

Yes, and the poster I was responding to didn't answer that question...they simply stated "oh please, you think fox news never lies???".

...which would be an example of what I stated.


Technically, we already know what would happen when Fox does something like this, people stick anti-Fox bumper stickers on their car, people on message boards spell "FOX" with a swastika where the "O" would normally be, and people try to use that information as a trump card when they're losing a debate to a conservative or when they want to ignore a citations that someone's providing.

 

[bhsmte]

Yes, and the poster I was responding to didn't answer that question...they simply stated "oh please, you think fox news never lies???".

...which would be an example of what I stated.


Technically, we already know what would happen when Fox does something like this, people stick anti-Fox bumper stickers on their car, people on message boards spell "FOX" with a swastika where the "O" would normally be, and people try to use that information as a trump card when they're losing a debate to a conservative or when they want to ignore a citations that someone's providing.

Here is the deal.

Fox has the highest news ratings and they have for quite a while now. They also have a certain tilt to their reporting, as other news sources have their own tilt.

Fox has been beating everyone else for a long time and it is not unlike the sports team that wins a lot of championships, that some love to hate.

If this incident happened with a Fox person, I would look at it the same way I do with Williams, it is a bad, bad thing for a news anchor to lie about themselves to create an image.

To me, it would be like finding out the lead physician at the smoking cessation clinic you are going to and talking to you about why smoking is so bad for you, happens to be a chain smoker. The air kind of goes out of the balloon and credibility is lost.

 

[wing2000]

Humans (and that includes the ones at NBC and FOX ) have a tendency to create false memories over time.

Williams's faux pas – retelling a story of his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq a dozen years ago when it was actually the helicopter flying ahead of him – was much like Hillary Rodham Clinton's during the 2008 presidential campaign. Her story was about coming under fire during a visit to an airfield in Bosnia 12 years earlier. George W. Bush also misremembered when, on several occasions, he told audiences that on 9/11 he watched the first plane fly into the north tower of the World Trade Center on TV, just before entering that classroom in Florida to read a book to school kids. In each case, these were highly emotional moments. Williams's helicopter made an emergency landing in the desert behind the aircraft that was hit; Clinton was made to don a flak jacket and was told her airplane might not be able to land at the airport in Bosnia because of sniper fire in the area; and Bush was told by an aide about the first crash into World Trade Center just before entering the classroom.

That each of those memories was false created huge public relations headaches for Clinton and Williams. But the fact is that false memories are not that uncommon, especially when they involve highly emotional events.

The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub - The Washington Post

 

[MachZer0]

Humans (and that includes the ones at NBC and FOX ) have a tendency to create false memories over time.



The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub - The Washington Post

How far will people like the author of that piece go to justify Williams' as a pathological liar? It looks like we're going to find out

 

[bhsmte]

Humans (and that includes the ones at NBC and FOX ) have a tendency to create false memories over time.



The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub - The Washington Post

There is no question, that people can have faulty memories, especially when experiencing highly emotional trauma.

The thing is though, most of the time, people forget certain parts of what happened, as opposed to manufacturing significant things that clearly did not happen.

Reading the accounts of this story, I have a hard time believing this was a simple case of him going through emotional trauma.

 

[wing2000]

There is no question, that people can have faulty memories, especially when experiencing highly emotional trauma.

The thing is though, most of the time, people forget certain parts of what happened, as opposed to manufacturing significant things that clearly did not happen.

Reading the accounts of this story, I have a hard time believing this was a simple case of him going through emotional trauma.

I tend to agree with you given the context in this case. There are differing accounts of what happened between the flight crew members. But Williams went further....

 

[NightHawkeye]

There is no question, that people can have faulty memories, especially when experiencing highly emotional trauma.

The thing is though, most of the time, people forget certain parts of what happened, as opposed to manufacturing significant things that clearly did not happen.

Reading the accounts of this story, I have a hard time believing this was a simple case of him going through emotional trauma.

A number of other statements made by Brian Williams are now being called into question ...

Brian Williams Once Claimed to See a Body Floating Down the Street After Katrina. There’s Just One Problem… | Video | TheBlaze.com

But now at least two of Williams’ Katrina statements are being questioned: that he saw a man “float by face down” from his hotel room in the French Quarter and that he caught dysentery after accidentally ingesting floodwaters, the New Orleans Advocate reported.

Since the French Quarter was said to have stayed relatively dry amid the devastating flooding elsewhere, some are questioning Williams’ account from a 2006 interview: “When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country…”
​

Oops ...

 

[trunks2k]

The thing is though, most of the time, people forget certain parts of what happened, as opposed to manufacturing significant things that clearly did not happen.

Meh... not really in my experience. In my experience people tend to embellish rather than forget.

 

[NightHawkeye]

And now it appears there are additional discrepancies even in the revised account of Brian Williams' story.

Claim Made on CNN Challenged by Pilot Who Says He Was in Command of Brian Williams' Chopper | TheBlaze.com

But, hours later, former Army pilot Chris Simeone challenged that claim in the New York Post, contending he was in fact the “pilot in command of the flight that carried Brian Williams into Iraq in March 2003.” However, according to Simeone, “All that hit us was dust.”

Krell’s account was further called into question by a report in the New York Times. The newspaper identified one of Williams’ pilots as Simeone and reporter Ravi Somaiya later tweeted that four soldiers “completely dispute” Krell’s claim he was the pilot.​

Apparently, there was not even any small arms fire.

 

[rambot]

Dear thread. The faux outrage of the last 8 pages is really, terribly cute. It reminds me how utterly "I know you are but what am I?" political threads so frequently get.

In closing, I'm reposting Post #6 because it is apropos and really all that needs to be said to summarize threads like this:

Yeah! Who cares!? Other people lie!


That's what it feels like, every time this sort of thing happens. We tend to get upset only if it's someone we don't agree with (politically/socially/etc).

 

[bhsmte]

Meh... not really in my experience. In my experience people tend to embellish rather than forget.

Nope.

During emotional traumatic events, people tend to block out memories, rather than add in random events.

 

[Sistrin]

There is no question, that people can have faulty memories, especially when experiencing highly emotional trauma.

The thing is though, most of the time, people forget certain parts of what happened, as opposed to manufacturing significant things that clearly did not happen.

There is a tremendous difference between being on a helicopter which made a quick landing and being on a helicopter which crashed due to taking RPG and AK-47 fire. One is a landing, the other is a crash. Being nervous because you are riding on a helicopter is not a traumatic event. If it were then thousands of flyers would emerge from their plane trips on a daily basis traumatized from the trip.

A helicopter crash involves the realization the helicopter you are on is falling from the sky, and there is nothing you can do but hang on and hope. Then comes the impact, followed by stuff flying all over the place and an overwhelming desire, given you are still alive, to get out of what remains as quickly as possible. There is the thought of being crushed to death, or being trapped inside and burning. These are traumatic moments. Landing quickly involves the thought of why are we landing quickly, usually followed by the crew chief telling you to remain in your seat.

You can neither confuse nor misremember the two.

 

[abysmul]

Oh gosh folks it was horrible! There was a terrible snow storm and right in front of out town's big shopping mall there was a 3 car pileup and there were police vehicles, rescue trucks, and all of that! Wow! I almost died in it.

(because I drove right past that spot... and hour after it was over)

That, to me, is not trauma induced or whatever.... it's a flat out lie.