With NBC News anchor Brian Williams choosing to take a “leave of absence” after admitting he lied about an incident in the Iraq War, many are wondering if his embellished reporting is an aberration, or typical of the way the mainstream liberal media does business.
For the past several years, Williams has made the claim that he was “traveling in an aircraft” that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, during the early days of the Iraq War in 2003. However, he now admits that he was not aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire and forced down. “I was instead in a following aircraft,” he added.
This revelation has led to predictable ridicule, as doctored photos of Williams — supposedly involved in great historical events such as the D-Day landing at Normandy, or even standing alongside President Lincoln — have gone viral.
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More seriously, questions are now being raised about some of Williams’ past coverage of events. Coming under particular scrutiny is his spectacular reporting from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Williams’ journalistic credentials were substantially enhanced by the events following the flooding of the Big Easy. In one dramatic report, he claimed that he saw a body float past him in the French Quarter. However, the French Quarter was on higher ground than most of the city, such as the Ninth Ward, where flooding did wreak havoc. An officer in the Oklahoma National Guard (which was deployed to New Orleans and searched throughout the city for any survivors trapped in houses) stated, “There were no bodies” in the French Quarter, adding that the water level there was less than knee high.
And in response to Williams’ claim that he contracted dysentery after drinking flood water, the Guard officer scoffed, explaining that there was “no reason” for Williams to drink flood water.
Dr. Brobson Lutz, who treated injured residents in an EMS trailer on Dumaine Street, was likewise skeptical. “I saw a lot of people with cuts and bruises and such, but I don’t recall a single, solitary case of gastroenteritis during Katrina or in the whole month afterward,” he asserted. He added that his dogs did drink floodwater, but “they didn’t have any problems.”
Are claims such as those of Williams unique to him or to NBC? Or is this typical of the liberal mainstream media?
One can recall how Dan Rather of CBS used fake documents in an attempt to prove that Republican President George W. Bush had received favorable treatment while Bush was in the National Guard back in the days of the Vietnam War. And then there is the incident of ABC’s attempted smear of the Food Lion grocery chain, fraudulently claiming it had deliberately sold spoiled food. ABC’s segment of Prime Time Live led to its losing a judgment in a federal case of more than $5 million in punitive damages to Food Lion. The story severely crippled the grocery chain, causing it to lose more than $4 billion in sales, cancel plans to open new stores, and lay off several thousand workers in its existing stores.
ABC reporters went undercover by taking jobs at Food Lion, and used hidden cameras in an attempt to create the story that Food Lion was, as a matter of policy and practice, selling out-of-date and spoiled food to the public. On the witness stand, Lynne Litt, an ABC producer who sold the idea to ABC News, admitted, “I know from ten years’ experience at ABC News that there are some limited circumstances in which it’s appropriate to tell a lie.”
In film footage that ABC did not use in the program, but which was played during the trial, an ABC undercover producer asks her Food Lion supervisor about a tray of chicken left out on a counter, wondering if she should just put the chicken back in the cooler. After the boss told her to “throw it out,” the producer is heard on the tape muttering, “Damn.” The ABC undercover reporters are caught on their own film in repeated violation of Food Lion rules. In another clip, shown to the jury, but not in the television program, the deli manager ordered an undercover reporter to throw out some chicken salad that had an expired date.
Some have compared Williams’ fabrication to the 2008 comments of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In a speech at George Washington University, Clinton recalled facing “sniper fire” during her 1996 trip to Bosnia to visit the troops. But there were no reports of sniper fire at the time from journalists traveling with the First Lady. And the film of her arrival at the Tuzia air base does not show Clinton or anyone else ducking or running for cover.
“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said in 2008. “There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get to into the vehicles to get to our base.” Clinton aides eventually admitted that her arrival was far less dramatic, and that they simply walked to their cars.
Because politicians such as Clinton are expected to spin their actions in the best possible light, her less-than-truthful recollections are not seen as serious as similar fabrications by the media. After all, while one understands that reporters might express diverse opinions and interpretations about news events, readers and viewers deserve accuracy and truthfulness when it comes to the facts.
Considering that the mainstream media has a long track record of favoring politicians who wish to expand the size, scope, and power of government, one has to wonder just how much of what is presented as the “news” is simply fabricated to advance a liberal social and political agenda, held by the reporters and their bosses at NBC, CBS, and ABC.
