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It’s seldom a good thing when the reporter becomes the story, but it’s to be expected among celebrity journalists like Brian Williams.
In this case, it is a good thing.
His story had more holes than the Chinook and was shot down by Stars & Stripes, followed by a volley of Twitter-bombs. It has taken NBC far too long to explain how it allowed the story to be repeated, and embellished, when there were obviously people who knew the truth.
But this is what happens when a news organization allows star power to outshine the content of its reporting. It risks everything, and its credibility is deservedly in tatters.
Plenty of examples exist in the realms of both print and broadcast journalism. Did anybody ever take Geraldo Rivera seriously after he spent two hours building up drama for an empty vault?
In my era, Hunter Thompson created a form of first-person journalism that freely mixed fantasy with fact. He was bigger than the stories he wrote. His credibility, however, survived and thrived because of his wit and insights — not because anyone took most of what he wrote as literal truth.
The lessons to be learned by the Brian Williams ‘misremembrances’ are as basic as Journalism 101:
Attribution: Where did this information come from?
Confirmation: One source isn’t good enough, even — and maybe especially — when it’s yourself.
Verification: There are ways to check a story other than talking to people.
Finally, a reminder of something I learned painfully a few times: My memory isn’t nearly as good as I like to think.
I’ve saved myself many times by double-checking something I ‘knew’ to be true. And most of the mistakes I made were a result of failing to do exactly that.
Still, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered whether my helicopter was shot down — without looking it up.