Brian Williams, the well-known Nightly News anchor at NBC, was aboard a military helicopter in Iraq in 2003 when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) and forced to come down. This incident, covered in the news later, contributed to his image as a fearless war reporter who faced the dangers of the war to bring the news to the world.

However, it turned out years later that there is a problem with this incident: the helicopter with Brian Williams on board was never hit by an RPG. It was another helicopter that took the hit, and Williams’s helicopter just ended up landing near it an hour after. It was uncovered later in interviews with the helicopter pilot and other witnesses.

Williams was accused of misrepresenting the Iraq incident, and lost credibility as a reporter. This led to a scandal, and in 2015 he was suspended from Nightly News Williams publicly apologized, admitting that his story of coming under re in Iraq was false. He said: “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago ... I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conate one aircraft with another”.

Could it be true? Could his memory of this highly traumatic event genuinely be distorted to this extent? Was he trying to fake a story to boost his reputation, or was he a victim of regular biases in human memory?

You can read (and watch) the full story in this Washington Post article: https://tinyurl.com4dlfe5