In 2003, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams was reporting on-scene from Iraq. He was in a convoy of Chinook helicopters on a supply run over desert west of Baghdad when one of them was struck by rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and small-arms fire. Well, no, actually, Embedded Man was in a helicopter about an hour behind the group of three in which one was hit.

The three choppers from the 159th Aviation Regiment descended safely, and were joined by the one Williams and camera crew were in. The whirlybirds were grounded for a few days, surrounded and protected by an Army unit with tanks.

MY GOD, WHAT A STORY!

Like a young fruit tree, that story got even better with time.

In 2013, Williams told David Letterman all about it, and now he was in the convoy when the copter got hit, in fact he was in THAT VERY CHINOOK! Imagine the flak ripping past him, the smoke filling the cabin, the panicked shouting! If you can’t, presumably Williams can.

“No kidding!” said Letterman.

“We figured out how to land safely,” Williams said. (Always a great idea to consult the journalist about operating a damaged helicopter!) “We landed very quickly. And hard. …And we were stuck. Four birds in the middle of the desert.” (Love that “four birds” jargon. Clearly this is a Man Who Knows.)

“You were on the ground, in combat, for three days!” embroidered Letterman. “I have to treat you now with renewed respect,” said Dave. “That’s a tremendous story.” Williams brushed it off with manly modesty. “Oh, don’t think any differently of me. I was an accidental tourist…”

MY GOD, WHAT A STORY!

Williams told Letterman he’d just been sent a photo from the time of himself with now-retired Army command sergeant major Tim Terpak, who had been part of the protective unit on the ground.

Last week, Williams attended a New York Rangers hockey game, along with Terpak. There was a dramatic announcement over the PA system, cameras on the pair, and huge crowd applause for a choked-up Terpak.

NBC posted a video of that lovely moment on Facebook. Soon, Lance Reynolds, who’d been the flight engineer on the Chinook that took fire, posted a comment: “Sorry dude, I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.” Oh, social media and your relentless attack machine.

MY GOD, WHAT A STORY!

Others joined Reynolds in saying it didn’t happen that way. Soon Williams was agreeing and apologizing. On Facebook, he wrote:

I spent much of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in ’08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp. Because I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area – and the fog of memory over 12 years – made me conflate the two, and I apologize.

He told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, “I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

He apologized on the Nightly News, and NBC posted that on Facebook.

On this broadcast last week, in an effort to honor and thank a veteran who protected me and so many others after a ground fire event in the desert during the Iraq War invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago. It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert. I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spend two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert.

This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension out brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, who served while I did not.

I hope they know they have my greatest respect and also, now, my apology.

NBC also posted Williams’s 2003 reporting, which did not make any claims about coming under fire. Though he did use the word “we” an awful lot.

It’s not enough. He needs to apologize not only to veterans, but also to the viewing public, which expects him to rely on facts, and not to gradually to spin those facts into adventure stories starring himself. He needs to take responsibility for committing the journalistic sin of misrepresenting his past reporting experiences, and show that he knows why that’s bad. There’s a lot of minimizing in that apology.

He needs to say less about how harrowing it was. War zones are scary. Sandstorms in the midst of a fully-supplied army unit? Less so. Note: Think about it before you agree to camp with Bri at Burning Man.

Some have accepted Williams’s apology, and some have not. Fox News of course says it was a flat-out lie. (Why do you suppose Fox reporters seem to think deliberate lies are the norm?) But I think Williams is truthful when he says he got to believing it himself. That’s something people do very readily. Memory is easily overwritten when it’s retold.

There’s reporting and there’s reminiscence. SOMETHING A REPORTER SHOULD KNOW AND GUARD AGAINST.

And then there’s Twitter, and the hashtag #BrianWilliamsMisremembers, with many exciting images of Williams at all kinds of historic events you didn’t know he’d been at.

D-Day was good, Thermopylae was okay, but I liked him at Tiananmen Square.