On Sunday, veteran journalist Carl Bernstein appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and the revelation that he lied multiple times about his reporting from Iraq.
Speaking to host Brian Stelter, Bernstein insisted that “NBC has a real obligation to publish the results of its investigation of all of these claims, counterclaims, to publish in full much like the Washington Post did after it had to return a Pulitzer Prize because it involved an invented story by a journalist who was a fabulist, who had made up the whole story.”
Bernstein’s comments came immediately after former SEAL Team six member Don Mann appeared on Reliable Sources and refuted Brian Williams’ claim that he received a piece of the helicopter that was destroyed during the Bin Laden raid.
Bernstein argued that “Brian Williams clearly was inventing some things” and that NBC News must address the situation and take appropriate action:
NBC also apparently was aware. People in the newsroom we think we're aware of some of this. And NBC needs to address its own procedures and what it knew and when it knew about these tendencies if they existed.
As the show progressed, Stelter brought on former CNN Foreign Correspondent Michael Ware to offer his own perspective regarding Brian Williams’ claim that he was on a helicopter that was taken down by an RPG while he was reporting from Iraq. The former CNN reporter maintained that the Nightly News anchor had committed “fraud of memory” by repeatedly telling this story:
It's like arriving on the scene of a downed chopper or arriving on the scene of a vehicle that's been destroyed by an IED roadside bomb and eventually deciding that, well, I was in that vehicle, I was in that chopper. I just don't see how that happens. Somehow or other, Brian Williams has committed a fraud of memory either upon himself or at worst, upon all of us.
Stelter then asked his guest whether or not as a war correspondent he had been tempted to embellish his own experiences but Ware stressed that such desires were “poison” for any journalist:
For journalists though, embellishment is poison. And for a journalist, invention is a kind of professional death. And we can be sanctimonious about ourselves and our role in society or inflate our importance, but I do believe that we all must be high church when it comes to these things, comes to matters of integrity.
We have to hold ourselves to the highest standard -- a standard higher than that which we hold anyone else, because what we have with the public, with the viewer, with the reader, quite honestly, is a sacred trust. And for me, a betrayal of that, a breaking of that, strikes at the core of what it is to be a journalist.
See relevant transcript below.
CNN’s Reliable Sources
February 15, 2015
CARL BERNSTEIN: I want to try one suggestion here, and that is that NBC has a real obligation to publish the results of its investigation of all of these claims, counterclaims, to publish in full much like the Washington Post did after it had to return a Pulitzer Prize because it involved an invented story by a journalist who was a fabulist, who had made up the whole story. It's incumbent on NBC that we learn exactly what the facts are.
What we do understand, I think, at this point is that Brian Williams clearly was inventing some things. Not necessarily on his air with regularity but in some of these other public appearances. And NBC also apparently was aware. People in the newsroom we think we're aware of some of this. And NBC needs to address its own procedures and what it knew and when it knew about these tendencies if they existed.
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STELTER: Michael, you've heard the stories that Brian Williams has told. Do they sound like tall tales to you? Do they sound like something more than that?
MICHAEL WARE, FORMER CNN FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Well, put it this way -- it eludes my understanding to see what it is that Brian Williams is saying about this conflation of this notion that he was in this helicopter that he was never in. I mean, most simply put, it's like arriving on the scene of a downed chopper or arriving on the scene of a vehicle that's been destroyed by an IED roadside bomb and eventually deciding that, well, I was in that vehicle, I was in that chopper. I just don't see how that happens. Somehow or other, Brian Williams has committed a fraud of memory either upon himself or at worst, upon all of us.
STELTER: Have you ever been in the field and found yourself wanting to take it on a step beyond what's actually true? Or is it true war correspondents actually understate what happens to them rather than overstate it?
WARE: Well, it's a hard won right of every old veteran to embellish the story as each year passes at each reunion. You know, the bullets in the air get thicker, the enemy becomes more numerous. But as I say, that's their right. For journalists though, embellishment is poison. And for a journalist, invention is a kind of professional death.
And we can be sanctimonious about ourselves and our role in society or inflate our importance, but I do believe that we all must be high church when it comes to these things, comes to matters of integrity. We have to hold ourselves to the highest standard -- a standard higher than that which we hold anyone else, because what we have with the public, with the viewer, with the reader, quite honestly, is a sacred trust. And for me, a betrayal of that, a breaking of that, strikes at the core of what it is to be a journalist.
