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Brian Williams’ Lie: The Bigger Picture
What should we make of Brian Williams’ admission that he lied about his helicopter being forced down in Iraq?
Initially, he may have lied about other things, as well.
But there’s a bigger story here …
Mainstream reporters are ALWAYS pro-war, acting as cheerleaders for the military-industrial complex and propagandists for the government.
Christian Christensen writes today:
Williams’ sad attempt to inject himself into the fabric of the violence is getting more ink and airplay than the non-existence of WMD did back in the early-to-mid 2000s: a lie that provided the justification for a military action that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
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The current focus on an inane untruth told by one celebrity news anchor has overshadowed the bigger picture about the US media and Iraq.
Digby notes that Williams’ Iraq lie served the pro-war narrative:
The lie about William’s getting shot down reinforced several ideas and narratives.
1) Iraq is a scary place and needs control. Reporters need to be embedded with “the troops” for their own protection. The green zone briefing tent gives the media what they need to know. Shorthand for staying put? “Remember what happened to Brian Williams.”
2) We need to fight these people, they are fighting us.
“They aren’t throwing flowers and sweets at us you peace-loving hippies! They SHOT AT BRIAN WILLIAMS! Of COURSE we had to kill everyone in the area!”
3) People with “skin in the game” sell the war better. Some in the military knew it was a lie, but why spoil Williams’ great story? “Let the baby have his bottle.”
4) Excitement! Ratings! Stories about people trying to kill rich innocent journalists are exciting! People at home can feel better about killing Iraq’s when America’s Favorite 30 Rock guest star is almost killed.
Getting the perspectives of the poor innocent Iraqis is boring and makes people at home feel bad. I’m falling asleep just typing that sentence.
5) The biggest relate-able celebrity is always used to pitch the story. Want to tell a story about the massive tsunami in another country? Tell the story of the white supermodel caught in it.
6) Use the “missing white woman” story for war. The decision by NBC and Williams to co-opt a real person’s experience was useful to get the public’s attention and empathy using someone they could relate to.
NBC and Williams might even have justified the lie saying it was representative of others’ real story that wouldn’t get covered without celebrity.
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Clearly this story could have been corrected many times in the past, but think about who would have had to do it and what they risked doing it earlier. Then think about how we can force earlier corrections.
Both the military brass and the NBC brass contributed to this “mistake.”
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Say you were there, either in Williams’ helicopter or the one actually forced down. When you see the story you go to your commanding officer and say, “That’s NOT what happened!” The officer thinks, “Does correcting this help or hurt our relationship with the media? Does it change the public’s perception of what is happening here?”
If the officer calls out Williams and asks for change what happens? Awkward! Maybe the officer just lets it slide and tells the solider to not bring it up since it’s true in general for people in some choppers, just not specifically for Williams.
Here’s the deal, the military media contacts aren’t the truth police, they aren’t NBC fact checkers. It’s not their job to get the media’s facts right. On the other hand, if the story made them look bad they would demand the truth, or negotiate some kind of deal. “We won’t tell anyone about your little fib, don’t tell anyone about our big lies.”
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Say you were a cameraman on the chopper with Williams and knew the story was BS. You tell the producer who thinks, does correcting this “mistake” help or hurt the story to the American public? What about NBC’s and Williams’ credibility?
How will the NBC brass feel finding out that the “brave reporter” story they have been hyping is a lie? Remember, NBC is the network who fired a top-rated money-making show because they didn’t want to be seen as anti-war.
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Of course smart people might ask, “Hey, if they made up stuff about the last war, might they be doing the same now with ISIS?” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! I can’t believe you aren’t shutting up already!
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Getting swept up in a pro-war narrative doesn’t just happen. It takes a lot of people who encourage it and keep it going. We will need narrative busters for current and future wars. People who can tell the truth and help thwart a easily lead media.
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Finally, Williams’ lie wasn’t a mistake for the pro-war forces, it was a valuable gift, worth 100’s of millions of dollars given by NBC to military contractors (one of whom, GE, was its parent at the time).
(NBC is over-the-top in glorifying war.)
Glenn Greenwald pointed out in 2008 that Williams is an establishment hack:
Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees — far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists. It’s just as simple as that. David Halberstam pointed that out some time ago. Unlike Yellin, Donahue and Banfield, nobody needed to pressure the likes of Williams, Gibson and Russert to serve as propaganda handmaidens for the White House. It’s what they do quite eagerly on their own, which is precisely why they’re in the corporate positions they’re in.
Greenwald said of Williams in 2012:
He cleanses and glorifies American government actions, especially military actions, with his reverent, soothing, self-important baritone …
Brian Williams doesn’t occupy the position he occupies — as America’s Most Serious and Visible News Anchor — despite his vapid glorification of American political and military leaders; he occupies it precisely because he’s so good at doing that. That’s the prime requirement of this job.
(FAIR provides a humorous example of Williams’ pro-war cheerleading: “Despite what Williams claimed … the invasion [of Iraq] did not actually spark a wave of democratization in the Middle East that made ‘even the harshest critics of President Bush…admit maybe he’s right about freedom’s march around the globe.’ “)
Greenwald also tears into Williams for pushing propaganda on Iran, and interviewing paid defense analysts without revealing their financial incentives.
And Justin Raimondo lambasts Williams as a shill:
Williams was a reliable foot soldier in the neocons’ war on truth.
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“No one in their right mind, [Williams] believed, would want America to pull out tomorrow. He did not want America to withdraw from Iraq.” Of course he didn’t: he and the rest of the flag lapel pin-wearing “mainstream” media had too much invested in the War Party’s success.
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The Williams record in covering up the sickening horrors wreaked by the US military in its never-ending campaign to re-order the world to Washington’s liking goes way back. When NATO jet fighters bombed a passenger train in Serbia – by “mistake” – killing a dozen and wounding dozens more, Williams intoned that visuals of the train attack “are so graphic that we cannot show them on television for fear of upsetting viewers.”
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil – that’s how the trained monkeys of our “mainstream” media treat the depredations of US imperialism: there’s no need to “upset” the delicate sensibilities of Americans, who might be disabused of their rulers’ beneficence. Better to view these crimes through the Vaseline-covered lens of a committed shill. Williams isn’t a reporter: he’s a cosmetician, whose job it is to prettify the ugly truth.
In 2003, as the neocons were crowing that the war they’d spent the last decade ginning up was a triumph, Williams was joining the chorus:
“They are calling this the cleanest war in all of military history. They stress they’re fighting a regime and not the people, using smart bombs, not dumb, older munitions. But there have been and will be accidents.”
By the end of it, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians had been slaughtered – by “accident,” no doubt.
Not content to cheerlead from the sidelines, Williams played the role of a scout eagerly pointing out potential targets:
“… And there’s a new weapon in this war: Arab media, especially al-Jazeera. It’s on all the time, and unlike American media, it hardly reflects the Pentagon line. Its critics say it accentuates civilian casualties and provokes outrage on the Arab street.”
A week later a US missile struck a generator at Al Jazeera’s Baghdad office, killing one reporter and wounding another.
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The man, in short, is a confirmed liar – but the confirmation took place years before being caught out in this latest prevarication.
A CIA operative told Washington Post editor Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:
You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.
Bottom line: Williams is just another presstitute.
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That IS prime PCR.
The Williams Affair is a very luke-warm zephyr in a tea saucer. If anything, as per PCR, the cheap little lies of this news-reader serve as a useful diversion of attention from the enormous, deathly lies presented daily by the likes of Kerry, Obama, McCain, Clinton and innumerable others, lies which are systematically ignored by those same figures who are so very, very concerned about Brian William's fantasies of manly adventure in the war zone.
NBC......
Isn't that the network that cut and pasted the Zimmerman 911 call to make him seem racist ?
Zimmerman's civil lawsuit against NBC is still percolating.
I hope he wins a controlling interest in NBC, and converts it into a network programming exclusively for "white hispanics".
Ah, Williams is sort of OK, kinda soothing, but stern about the necessity for war. CNN is the rah rah shoot 'em up cowboy for any administration going to the battle ground. Remember Geraldo and Charles Jacko?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWY14eyMFg#t=116
"...Williams isn’t a reporter: he’s a cosmetician, whose job it is to prettify the ugly truth..."
Williams is a mortician...
Williams is another wannabe who got close to the action and wanted to be an Alpha guy - read warrior - without the sacrifice. Common as rain - Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary (Benghazi), every other stolen valor pussy.
I would say the same for the new 'military' cops with the war outfits but gets to go home at night. Don't want to get started on that one.
Williams should be made to now ride a helo into the action he falsely claimed he was in and then he can yap yap about what will be his crap crap
What a despicable pussy
The idea that he disremembered an RPG hitting the helo he was in is beyond idiotic. This could not be mistakn by ANYBODY on the planet even a blind guy hard of hearing ! It only gets more absurd. Too bad there wasn't a follow up shot.
brian williams is a lying sack of shit. My cousin (Marie Colvin) was killed in Syria a couple of years ago covering that conflict. She had more balls than this POS ever will. Suck it nbc!
For as informed as we all think we are, on a daily basis I learn how little I really know.
Until I read your comment about your cousin Marie's death I had never even heard of her.
Early deaths are tragic, I am sorry for your families loss and grief. But how people die can make it more tragic.
I found lots of reference, but for those like me that saw her name for the first time, here is a place to start.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/postscript-marie-colvin-1956-2012
Lets see how MSM controls the story and even what is news:
1.A young un armed mother with child in her car.
2. She is by the way a black American.
3. she makes mistakes while driving in down town DC, near the whitehouse and capital bldg.
4. police cars rush after her for running into barriers at white house, and they then hit barriers that pop up in those same streets (for security reasons we have steal posts that can be activated to pop up in public road ways.
5. her car in videos of this action has NO DAMAGE after hitting these so called barriers while on video we see a police car almost cut in half..hmmmm did she hit anything?
6. she steps out of her car (0n video) with no weapon is sorrounded by 15 or twenty cops, sec service agents capitol police and is shot multiple times
6. her Name was Miriam Carey..her murder is not part of our Nightly news, swept under the rug, no al sharpton or other so called black leader says one word.
7.In congress that day the police and security forces are given an standing ovation by congress.
8. I ask why was this murder swept under the rug..I leave it to ZH posters to answer that question.
Next people are going to begin to question Hillary's story about being under evil Serbian sniper fire while visiting Bosnia...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582795/Hillary-Clintons-Bosni...
Vote for truth and integrity... Clinton/Williams 2016
The real horror story was what the Serbian snipers had to look at. The conundrum was - if I shoot Janet Reno - have I killed Chelsea Clinton's father and what will be the consequences. Very confusing ROE
P.S. To the NSA and Hommoland Security - this post was made by a hacker in your agency - not me. God Save the Queen
Web Hubbell is Chelsea's dad, Janet Reno her godfather.
Too bad it wasn't Vince Foster. He was better looking than Web Hubbell.
Media pro war.
Liberals anti war.
Media pro liberal.
????
Name new thing that the Government is NOT telling us lies about!
You owe us half your money, or all your money if you care to check box 24a.
Globally the ELITE (the REAL terrorists) as predicted, are PANICKING and getting fricking hysterical again.
They tend to do that WHEN THEY FEAR THAT THEIR ABILITY TO CONTINUE TO KEEP US ENSLAVED AND STEAL FROM US IS BEING THREATENED.