Media commentators pounce on news anchor for “misremembering” he was aboard helicopter grounded by RPG fire.
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Media analyst Bernie Goldberg added his voice to the chorus of criticism directed at NBC News anchor Brian Williams for saying that he had been aboard a helicopter grounded by enemy fire in Iraq in 2003, although the anchor was nowhere near the craft when the incident happened.
Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s program on the Fox network, Goldberg said, “if he lied, and I suspect he did, it’s not the usual lie…. I’ll call it the celebrity lie. Celebrities go on television every night of the week, usually on the late night shows and they lie. They say such and such happened to them. It never did. They make it up. And the reason they make it up is because they have to be entertaining and they know that the truth isn’t always all that interesting.”
He said that people don’t care if a “ditzy celebrity” makes up some “ditzy story”, but “a news man who is also a celebrity cannot do that because when he does, you have to wonder what else he’s making up.”
He added that “this will come to nothing in the throwaway culture that we live in. Nothing is newsworthy for more than a day or two”, saying that he expected NBC “to passionately do nothing. If they issue a statement, it will be ‘Brian Williams addressed this, next.’ No, I expect nothing.”
The pilot of the helicopter Williams was on claimed that their aircraft was, in fact, shelled by enemy combatants on the day in question.
The fallacy of Williams’ story was brought to light by several crew members on the helicopter that was brought down by RPG fire, who told Stars and Stripes that the newsman was in fact nowhere near the Chinook aircraft when it went down. The anchor subsequently apologized both on-air and in a Facebook post, saying he “misremembered” the incident.
