On the Brian Williams story

[A story of my own: When I was a lad of about 13 years, I was camping in the Adirondacks with my family, as we did every year, and one day we decided to take a hike further back into the woods where there was, reportedly, a family of beavers damming up a small stream. We hiked several miles along a barely visible path, then veered off for another half-mile when we thought we heard the sound of a waterfall.

Sure enough, we chanced upon the beaver pond, with a beaver dam and we sat down to eat a sandwich and watch for the beaver. After a time, we got up to head back to our camp. We walked quite some distance when we realized that we weren't going in the right direction. We tried several other routes, all to no avail. We were able to work our way back to the beaver pond, and my father took off on his own to try to find the way out. He returned an hour later to let us know he couldn't find the trail.

While he'd been gone, I noticed a rock at the the end of the beaver pond, just above the water line, that had been painted orange. I pointed it out to my Dad, and we all walked over and looked around a bit. Not too far off there was an orange blaze (spray paint) on a tree - and then we found another and yet another until we were back to the faint trail we had walked in on. Somehow, we had gotten turned around when we went in by going past the pond, then coming back to it headed in the wrong direction.

Now, to my point. About 40 years later, while retelling the tale, my father pointed out to me that I was sadly mistaken, that indeed, HE had discovered the orange rock at the end of the pond that had led us to the way out. Now, in my mind I can clearly remember seeing the rock, pointing it out to my mother and saving the day. My father's memory is just as clear, that when he returned from his solitary search for a way out, that HE had seen the rock and saved the day.

Memory works that way. It picks up the details and rebuilds the story the way it wants. Who was right about the orange rock? I haven't got a freakin' clue - except that I can remember as clear as day that it was me. I completely understand what happened to Brian Williams and I doubt that it was an intentional lie. But I could be wrong.

I don't have a care in the world one way or another about Brian Williams. I agree with Bill Maher in his show (Real Time on HBO) this past week - the nightly news sucks. They do one big story, two or three small stories, then the rest of the program is ads and viral videos from YouTube. What a lazy way to build a news broadcast. Shame on them. - Bozo]

Brian Williams and the Psychology of False Memories

FEB 9, 2015 03:26 PM ET // BY BENJAMIN RADFORD
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NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was criticized last week for a dramatic first-person story he'd told and retold since 2003 of being in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. After questions were raised about the truthfulness of his account and how it had changed over time, Williams apologized.
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Wartime events and memories are especially fraught with baggage - including political, personal, and patriotic. Those who falsely characterize their first-hand experiences during wartime, and especially under enemy fire, are often accused of "stolen valor" akin to a person wearing medals he or she did not earn, or pretending to be a combat veteran. In fact the subject is taken so seriously that in 2013 President Obama signed the Stolen Valor Act, making it a federal crime for people to falsely pass themselves off as war heroes by wearing unearned medals.
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But a case like that of Brian Williams is not so clear-cut; he did not pretend to be a veteran soldier, nor did he wear any military uniform or medals. He told a story whose narrative changed over time and veered into inaccuracy.
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Williams is hardly alone. In 2008 Sen. Hillary Clinton recalled a first-hand experience during which she remembered landing in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire, yet news footage showed that her group did not arrive under attack. Clinton's critics accused her of deception, but she claimed she simply and honestly misremembered her experience and apologized.
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Mark Kirk, a Republican Senator from Illinois, admitted in 2010 that he made "mistakes" in describing his military service. During his Senate campaign, Kirk claimed that he'd served in Operation Iraqi Freedom ("The last time I was in Iraq, I was in uniform flying at 20,000 feet and the Iraqi Air Defense network was shooting at us," he said in 2003), and that he'd received the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award. Kirk later admitted that he had not served (nor come under fire) in the Gulf, nor did he receive the award he claimed.
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