Some Other Tall Tales Brian Williams Might Want to Apologize For

[Octafish]

Some Other Tall Tales Brian Williams Might Want to Apologize For

by Jim Naureckas
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Feb. 5, 2015

EXCERPT...

Or perhaps Williams would like to withdraw his remark (9/27/13; FAIR Action Alert, 9/30/13) that Iran was [font color="green"]"suddenly claiming they don't want nuclear weapons"[/font color]–and acknowledge that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (NBC Nightly News, 7/28/08) had told him personally in an interview five years earlier: "We are not working to manufacture a bomb. We don't believe in a nuclear bomb." And that that was a repetition of what Ahmadinejad (NBC Nightly News, 9/19/06) had told him two years before that: "We have said on numerous occasions that our activities are for peaceful purposes…. We are against the atomic bomb."

Williams could also make clear that when he relayed claims (4/2/03; Media Beat, 7/9/07) that the invasion of Iraq was [font color="green"]"the cleanest war in all of military history,"[/font color] that was total nonsense. Or that when he said that in Iraq, [font color="green"]"the civilian toll is thought to range from 17,000 to nearly 20,000 dead and beyond"[/font color] (3/18/05; Action Alert, 3/21/05), the best available estimate (Lancet, 10/29/04) was that 100,000 civilians had already died.

And despite what Williams claimed on March 8, 2005 (Extra!, 6/05), the invasion did not actually spark a wave of democratization in the Middle East that made [font color="green"]"even the harshest critics of President Bush…admit maybe he's right about freedom’s march around the globe."[/font color] Nor did George W. Bush provide [font color="green"]"an example of presidential leadership that will be taught in American schools for generations to come."[/font color]

SOURCE w/links: http://fair.org/blog/2015/02/05/some-other-tall-tales-brian-williams-might-want-to-apologize-for/

[leveymg]

1. Nobody in network news ever lost their job for agreeing with Right-wing lies about foreign affairs.

I think Brian was just trying to embellish his conservative credentials because he thought it was mandatory. Nobody noticed until now.

[Octafish]

2. Guy's been polishing, Big Time: ''The Sins of Brian Williams''

The Sins of Brian Williams

They are many – and he’s far from alone

by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar.com, February 06, 2015

NBC anchor Brian Williams just makes stuff up, and the world is shocked – but, then again, if you’ve been a regular reader of Antiwar.com, you already knew what a liar he is.

The Twitteratti are a tizzy over Williams’ blatant fibbery: he’s been telling the same story for years, all about how he was in a helicopter over Iraq that came under attack and he feared for his life. "I was in a place I had no business being," he said the other day, reiterating the lie and even embellishing it. This was too much for those soldiers who had actually been there, and they quickly debunked his tall tale: Stars and Stripes got a hold of it, and Williams was soon issuing groveling-yet-incomplete apologies, claiming he’d "misremembered" the incident. The Twitter mob then descended – but what are they complaining about? After all, this is the very least of the lies Williams has told on air – and, as far as I’m concerned, the least egregious.

Way back in 2007, I pointed out the pernicious role Williams played in the run-up to the Iraq war, loyally echoing the War Party’s triumphalist nonsense. Citing Howard Kurtz’s 2007 book, Reality Show: Inside the Last Great Television News War, I pointed out in this space that Williams was a reliable foot soldier in the neocons’ war on truth. As Kurtz put it:

[font color="green"]"For (Brian) Williams, it all went back to 9/11. As a citizen, he had thought on that fateful day, thank God that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell were on this team. How together we all seemed. In Williams’s view, there was something about the murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that, in the eyes of the White House press corps, gave Bush a stature that could not be violated."[/font color]

Williams, said Kurtz, doesn’t "enjoy looking back on the run-up to war," perhaps because he realizes his own key role in making the whole disaster possible. Now there’s a clue as to what motivated him to "misremember" made-up fantasies of personal heroism. It’s all part of the same cover-up: layers of glamorous lies to hide the prosaic reality.

He might have partially redeemed himself in his postwar (2006) interview with President Bush, but he chose not to do that. When Dubya stuck to his justifications for the war by stupidly insisting Iraq had "the capacity" to build WMD, Williams let it slide. [font color="green"]When Bush denied ever claiming a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, Williams said … nothing.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/05/the-sins-of-brian-williams/

NBC doesn't let just anybody on-air. They have to be trusted to be a War Inc propagandist, uh, on-air personality.

[leveymg]

3. Perhaps being overly-generous, he may have been self-programming for success.

I don't think Brian's a natural wingnut. He had to remake himself to fit into corporate life, I believe. I know something about that.

[Octafish]

7. Edward R. Murrow wouldn't be allowed on-air today.

Not only would he call out the media and its charlatans by name, chapter and verse for helping lie the United States into an illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous wars for profit; Murrow would demand that those responsible for attacking countries that were no threat to the United States be held accountable.

As an old reporter, I would be first to hope that he would not be the first to voice those observations on-air.

PS: And ENRON and the banksters.

PPS: And Agent Mike and NSA domestic spy op.

[leveymg]

9. TV news is dead. Most on-air talent are ethical zombies chosen for looks and

ability to keep to a script. Williams has both.

A few have moments of humanity. I think Brian still had his.

[JEB]

4. Lying liars.

Professionals in the case of corporate media.

[Octafish]

5. Media Lie Like Rugs

An example of dishonesty in the truth biz comes from a commercial that aired yesterday on NBC's Sunday Night Football, telling viewers that NBC's "State of Affairs" is "the critics' favorite new drama":



See how they use a nice quote from the "critic" at E! Online to make sure the point is hammered ho-, er, uh, reinforced visually.

What is missing from the screen and audio track, what NBC doesn't tell you, is that NBC is owned by Comcast and that Comcast also owns E!

Thus, no duh. Without question "State of Affairs" is "the critic's favorite new drama" at E! They get paid by the same company what made the new drama.

That little omission represents a major deceit. They lead viewers to believe the critic is a person without ties to NBC and Comcast and their television show. A critic with ties is a biased critic and that is no critic.

Just one example of how Media Lie. It's all business as usual for the Media Monopoly, the six global players that pretty much create almost all of what We the People see, hear and read every dumb day. That undemocratic reality also is omitted from what passes for news and information these days.

So, the next time the Corporate Media are at work on your and your family's minds, remember that the bosses of the few corporations think We are too dumb to notice when they do their Thing.

PS: Sorry about the image quality -- it's a phone camera capture.

PPS: "State of Affairs" also has a greatly memetic tagline: "All the President's men are nothing compared to her."

[JonLP24]

6. Exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of

For all the lies our corporate news broadcasts, they certainly pick a lie out of nowhere to end someone's career.

[Orsino]

8. And he goes down for a goddamned helicopter...

...after so dutifully lying us into said war.