True Journalism
As the evening news anchor for NBC, Brian Williams is one of the most respected and trusted men in America. His intimate storytelling ability and serious, yet calm manner has earned him overwhelming success and a seemingly unassailable position as the king of nightly news. But at the height of all conceivable success, the pressure and temptation to go one step beyond good reporting and establish a personal connection to the stories caught Williams in a web of falsehood and fabrication.
Specifically, certain embellishments made by Williams to events during a helicopter attack in Iraq have raised questions about his previous reporting and erased his well-earned reliability seemingly overnight. The true account is that a helicopter flying in front of Williams was hit by RPG fire. Over the past twelve years, as he has recounted it, the story has snowballed to the point that he has recently declared that it was his own helicopter that was hit.
Williams is not the only journalist or politician to have dramatized experiences for audience interest. Many are equating Williams’ incident with a situation that emerged with Hillary Clinton a few years ago. Clinton was rebuked for her false claim during her 2008 campaign that she was under sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996.
The tale Clinton told about being under sniper fire in Bosnia has become a minor footnote in her political career, while the mistake made by Brian Williams has cost him all his respect and potentially his job. While some believe that the mild reaction to Clinton’s mistake should be the same punishment as Williams’, I argue that these are two very different cases. Politicians are expected to be self-serving and focused on making themselves look good. On the other hand, the very nature of journalism’s mission is to tell the truth. While I do not condone Clinton’s actions, I think that Williams’ punishment should and will be much more severe than her's, given the different responsibilities they are each expected to uphold.
When Williams’ scandal was brought to light, he gave a disappointing apology. It was weak and muddled, and a grave mistake. He said that he had accidentally “conflated” the two helicopters in his mind. This was not a good approach and only served to thrust him deeper into hot water. A solid and convincing apology was the necessary to begin to make amends with a public that feels deceived after 10 years of trust and admiration. Without this, I feel no reason to make any move to try to forgive him.
I don’t believe Williams is a manipulating, deceptive person. I think he is merely a man who got too caught up in making a good story and lost touch with the most important part: the truth.
In becoming a journalist, he undertook the responsibility of providing us with this crucial truth. He was my eyepiece to the outside world and I trusted him to deliver accurate information. To learn that he knowingly altered a news story to benefit his own image is simply inexcusable and something that I don’t think deserves to be forgiven. ♥