My argument about Williams has always been that his misstatements were unfortunate given his profession, and that he should resolve to do better, but that they were not by themselves disqualifying. He did not make mistakes about events he was reporting, he made mistakes about his own personal experience. If in an interview a historian mis remembers attending a Beatles concert as a teen, that does not necessarily decrease the credibility of his book about the Vietnam War.
I think most people assume Williams was consciously lying to make himself look heroic, which might tend to make them think he was an unreliable reporter. I think he was victim of the kind of common, every day memory illusions that plague all of us, and that did not directly relate to his professional work. I would hate to have millions of fact checkers researching every one of the personal anecdotes I used to tell as a college teacher. My view at the time and now is that Williams had become so comfortable as a guest on talk shows that he allowed that informal raconteur role to leak into his news reporter persona. I thought he should not have been banned from his job at NBC, but should have stopped appearing as a personality on entertainment shows (though I did always enjoy him on TDS). All’s well that ends well. I never watch the NBC Nightly News, but often watch Williams’ “The 11th Hour” on MSNBC, which I think during the Trump Era has consistently been the best hour of news on commercial television. > As I tried to point out during all the hyperventilating during the Brian > > Williams affair, this kind of thing is not related to honesty, or even to > > memory impairment > > The important difference here is that if we have to take Hanks' stories > with a grain of salt, fine; as long as they're entertaining (which Hanks' > stories usually are), it's okay. But if we have to take the NBC Nightly > News with a grain of salt, they're in trouble. > > -- > 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]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKSNnOFEAH-e0S8YKHgDcHHKmD4DVDvQOQLpGyYcEuYy%2BO4QqA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKSNnOFEAH-e0S8YKHgDcHHKmD4DVDvQOQLpGyYcEuYy%2BO4QqA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- 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]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkY%2BUJx6OFAb8tCt%3DJEuX%2B%3DgvFDvPTNf%3D-Jr0pPWukb0bkg%40mail.gmail.com.
