On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 5:50 PM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > First, I appreciate that I'm discussing this with someone who actually > knows what he's talking about. > > > Misremembering a dramatic and traumatic event is a > > function of the same memory processes as > > misremembering who got off the funniest line at the > > dinner party you were at last week, or who scored the > > winning touchdown in your high school homecoming > > football game 20 years ago. > > They may be the same processes, but I find it hard to believe that we're > as likely to misremember what Mom was wearing last time we saw her as we > are to misremember whether or not she's still alive. > > Regarding anchors, even if we're just talking innocent memory lapses > before introducing tape pieces, what happens if he or she misremembers that > Israel started the war in Syria? >
Well, I don't think you are quite setting this up appropriately. My point really is not about putting a probability on how likely it is that Williams is lying vs honestly misremembering (I have noted several times now that I have no way of knowing if he has been consciously lying). My point is that there is nothing in his version of this incident (that he conflated the two helicopters, even with such dramatic details needing to be invented) that makes the claim that he was honestly misremembering implausible. Moreover, while dramatic memory distortions are probably not as common as trivial memory failures, it is not doubt true that everyone reading this post has experienced more than one fairly significant and comprehensive memory illusion, which they nevertheless had (and likely continue to have) almost 100% confidence in. Of course most of us would not falsely remember being in a helicopter that was shot down, but then for most of us this would be an implausible event. I lived through a fairly large earthquake when I was a kid, and have told the story with some frequency over the years (maybe once every three years). I would hate to compare my current best memory of that day with a video record of what actually happened - I doubt that more than a third of it would be accurate. Again, Brian Williams may be a pathological liar, but to establish that we would need a lot more evidence than simply the misremembered helicopter incident, which simply makes him human. As to your last question, that goes to what I have been saying since the start of this thread. The real criticism of Williams is not that he misremembered the event, but that he relied on his uncorroborated memory in repeating it on television several times. He might argue that he was not actually reporting the news when he did so, but it does relate to a story that he was covering as a journalist, and his careless and feckless approach to double-checking his facts in this case can legitimately be used to raise questions about how careful and responsible he is when reporting other facts. As I have also noted, as has Kevin in his own inimitable style, Williams deficiencies in this area (being careful with the accuracy of his facts) pale in comparison to most of his current peers in television news, and I don't think at this point rise to the level of justifying that he be fired. If we find that he has reported other facts that are untrue (as in the Katrina allegations) and not just personal anecdotes that may be plausibly misremembered, that would be quite another thing. Additionally, if the internet culture makes him such a joke that, deservedly so or not, he can no longer function as the voice of NBC News, I suppose they may have no choice but to fire him as well. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
