Caught In The Act

It’s likely that at some point in our lives we’ve all passed off someone else’s story as our own. Personalising a third-person account helps make a story more evocative and it’s mostly harmless. There are two things you want to keep in mind, though, when passing a story off as your own:

1) Make sure your story doesn’t have witnesses who can contradict you.
2) Make sure you aren’t fibbing in your official capacity as a prime-time news anchor.

Sadly, I wasn’t around to advise the face of National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC) Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams, who was recently forced into admitting to exactly this. Williams has, rather ironically, found himself in the firing line for claiming to have come in the line of rocket propelled grenade (RPG) fire while aboard a military chopper during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At the time the incident took place, Williams reported the story as it actually happened, mentioning that a chopper ahead of his own had taken RPG fire, following which the entire fleet was grounded. However, in his retelling of the story, on the October 3, 2013 taping of The Letterman Show, Williams made himself the protagonist of the story.

Still, Williams would have gotten away with that. Unfortunately, it’s hard to resist telling a good story, especially when it makes for television ratings gold. So, on January 30, 2015, NBC ran this:

In the clip, Williams invites a former soldier who had been with him after his chopper had been grounded to a hockey game, and in the resultant news clip, recounts the same bogus story.
Once the clip had been uploaded onto NBC’s Facebook page, a soldier aboard the actual chopper that was shot down commented on the video and that’s what finally opened the can of worms.

Williams responded to the comment with an apology that seemed less sincere, and more an attempt at saving face – attributing his “misremembering” of the incident to the “fog of memory over the last 12 years”.

I’ve had moments of foggy memory just like Williams, still, none so thick as to make me “misremember” being shot at by RPGs.

In a field where credibility is your currency and viewers’ trust all-important, Williams’ revelations have led to calls for his sacking. Despite tendering a second apology, Williams has, as of February 8, 2015, taken himself off air for “several days” or at least until this storm blows over.

While it’s hard to recall a case of an Indian anchor lying as blatantly as Williams, it has become almost routine for media houses to take credit for the exclusive reports of others. A case in point would be the “Diarygate” scandal that was actually broken by DNA but which was claimed as an “exclusive” by a host of news channels.

The bigger takeaway from the whole NBC episode should be the impact of social media and greater access to information on dubious claims. No longer can a journalist make a claim and expect it to be swallowed as if sacrosanct – the internet has changed the one-way dynamic that previously existed and even the smallest of claims are subject to public scrutiny.

Take for example, the Barkha Dutt-Rahul Pandita Twitter exchange in October, 2013. The incident took place during the coverage of a skirmish between the army and terrorists in the Keran sector. While Dutt began her shows on the encounter claiming to be live from “ground zero” in the Keran sector, Pandita disputed her claims with the following tweets:

Dutt defended herself with this:

Dutt was technically in the right having claimed to be live from Keran sector, only it wasn’t “ground zero”. Still, it just goes to show how in the age of social media any claim can be contested. To be anything but accurate is to open yourself up to scrutiny.

However, while the internet does open journalists up to more intense scrutiny, we also live in a world where news comes thick and fast and public memory is, as a result, notoriously short.

I imagine we’ll see this play out with Williams. While slamming him may be the flavour of the day, the man is personable enough to be the flavour of the week again before too long. His move to step down temporarily echoes the belief that the same “fog of memory” that plagued Williams afflicts the public equally.