“The NBC News anchor Brian Williams apologized Wednesday for mistakenly claiming he had been on a helicopter that was shot down by ground fire in Iraq in 2003.
Last week, NBC Nightly News filmed Mr. Williams taking a soldier to a New York Rangers game. The public address announcer at the game explained to the crowd that “U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Tim Terpak was responsible for the safety of Brian Williams and his NBC News team after their Chinook helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire” during the invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Terpak received a standing ovation, and, on Facebook, where NBC posted a video of the story, Mr. Williams was also praised. But one commenter cast doubt on the story, which Mr. Williams also told in vivid and specific detail to David Letterman in 2013.
“Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft,” wrote Lance Reynolds on Facebook. “I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.”
The military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which first reported on the Facebook comment, identified Mr. Reynolds as the flight engineer on the helicopter. He and other crew members told Stars and Stripes that Mr. Williams was not in their helicopter that had been shot down, but in one that arrived an hour later.
On Wednesday, Mr. Williams, the news anchor, replied on Facebook and admitted that he had made a mistake, acknowledging that he was not in an aircraft hit by ground fire, but instead was in a following aircraft.”
Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/business/media/brian-williamsapologizes-for-saying-he-was-shot-down-over-iraq.html?_r=0
John Iadarola (http://www.twitter.com/jiadarola), Dave Rubin (http://www.twitter.com/rubinreport) and Michael Shure of The Young Turks discuss.
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