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from the DRAM-is-to-SRAM-as-Human-Memory-is-to-??? dept.
Brittny Mejia writes at the Los Angeles Times that while some are accusing Brian Williams of deliberately lying about his account of being on a helicopter under attack in Iraq, researchers have long said that memory is not as straightforward as we tend to think. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, has been conducting research into planting false memories of events in people's minds and found that people can be convinced of these made-up memories through the power of suggestion. "Memory is susceptible to contamination and distortion and supplementation. It happens to virtually all of us," says Loftus. "This could easily be the development of a false memory." According to Daniel Schacter we create these false memories because our brains are designed to tell stories about the future. “Memory’s flexibility is useful to us, but it creates distortions and illusions,” says Schacter. “If memory is set up to use the past to imagine the future, its flexibility creates a vulnerability — a risk of confusing imagination with reality.”
Williams isn't the only one involved in the incident who recanted claims and blamed his memory. Pilot Richard Krell originally said that he was at the command of the "second bird" in a formation of three Chinooks, with Williams riding in the back of the "second bird." Krell said all three of the helicopters came under "small arms fire," lending support to the stories Williams told over the years about being "under fire" in Iraq. However Krell later recanted after the newspaper Stars and Stripes published a story contradicting his account. "The information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this point I am questioning my memories," Krell said. "For the past 12 years I have been trying to forget everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan; now that I let it back, the nightmares come back with it, so I want to forget again."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday February 08 2015, @12:45PM
Williams's job was a reporter when it happened, it was his JOB to get the facts right.
No its his job to input corporate/government propaganda and output a likeable watchable story. His profession is hardly "professional historian" or "forensic scientist" or "accident investigator" or "engineer". He's the face of a propaganda org, nothing more or less.
The question no one is asking, is why are the knives out to get this guy? He's in a job field of professional liars and maybe he's not the best but hes not exactly the worst either. Superficially there seems little reason to "get" him vs his competitors. So he said the wrong thing to the wrong person. I'm curious what it was? He made some kind of anti-war or anti-drug war comment on camera, accidentally? He wasn't reverent enough to someone with enough power to trivially crush him? The real story is not being covered and is a heck of a lot more interesting than a glorified fishing story that got a bit out of hand. Or maybe its the other way around and he's being attacked for being too establishment.
I don't watch much infotainment (seriously? TV news is for white haired people, like 65+), so I have no idea about the guys political biases or little mistakes he may have made.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday February 08 2015, @04:47PM
It's telling how many of us are now equating those two reflexively.
I suspect you are right about why Brian Williams is being crucified for this--some powerful person or interest is out to get him. If telling lies like he did were a disqualification for professional corporate media work, all the talking heads would be replaced by crickets.
We do know that after years of laying off reporters and killing newsrooms that most "journalists" have devolved to simple stenographers who take corporate press releases, slap a title on it, and call it "news." It's both a cost-cutting measure, because you don't have to pay for investigative reporting, per diems, etc, and a revenue generator because you charge the companies fees for recasting their PR pieces as news. After 20 years of that the traditional news organizations in the United States have been completely hollowed out; Of the significant scoops I can recall over the last 10 years, most, if not all, have been broken by bloggers and foreign news organizations (like the Guardian).
So to track back the source of this campaign against Brian Williams, we'd have to look at the major NYC- and DC-based PR firms and see who's been spending big with more than 1 of them recently, and sift through to see if any of them might have incentive for driving a smear campaign against him (or his employer, with him as a stalking horse).
If there are any Soylentils with access to that kind of information, perhaps the press release raw feeds, it might shed some light on your theory.
There has been a lot in the news lately about the Kochs and other wealthy idealogues preparing to spend $1billion on the 2016 election cycle. This could be part of the opening salvo to completely capture and drive the national narrative. If so, it probably wouldn't even matter that it's Brian Williams, because it would cow every other news organization that didn't toe the line (be that what it may).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @06:09PM
By that same logic you should be asking who it is that stands to gain from Bill Cosby's scandal. There are similarities - Cosby's issues have been a known problem in the industry for years - he even settled a civil case about it. Or how about that racist basketball team owner - his problems were also known having lost fair housing cases in court for discriminating against black people.
Most of the time a scandal happens because some event caused the pot to finally boil over. People have been complaining about Williams embellishing this story for years, but it took him going even farther and a tweet at the right place and right time to get enough people to notice and then in snowballed.