Brian Williams and the NBC Nightly Lies
On Monday, one of America’s most respected and trusted newscasters was suspended from his post following the revelation that he had lied on the air. In 2003, Williams was aboard a Chinook helicopter in Iraq when thirty minutes later, another Chinook close by was struck with a rocket-propelled grenade. Williams has either knowingly or unknowingly conflated the story for members of his viewership. He has claimed that he was aboard the helicopter that was struck with an RPG, and in a 2013 segment describing the event, made no efforts to eschew David Letterman’s description of him as a “war hero”. Williams admitted that his telling of the story was a mistake, after members of the crew aboard the helicopter in question came forward, stating that Williams was nowhere near the attack. Once Williams’ credibility was called into question, other claims he had made when reporting were called into question, including events that he reported on during his coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In line with the falls from grace observed of other trusted television personalities, such as Bill Cosby, one can assume that now that Williams’ integrity has been called into question, other discrepancies and lies in his reporting will be revealed over the course of the next days and weeks. Prior to this event, Brian Williams was seen as a trusted and honest provider of the news and thus many of his claims went unquestioned. Now that the first seed of doubt has been planted, one can expect there will be many eager gardeners for the sowing of his reputation as a fraud and a liar. According to the New York Times, Williams ranked as the 23rd most trusted person in the country before the scandal and has since fallen to the 835th position. It has been announced that the NBC will now be doing an internal probe and fact checking stories Williams has previously reported on. The question is, how did Williams earn such ubiquitous trust within the network that requisite fact checking processes went unheeded for his stories?
In the event that a newscaster is imbued with such boundless trust that the facts in his stories are not thoroughly fact checked, it is imperative that the person in question is motivated to deliver factual information rather than to enhance their own image or further their career. Kasser and Ryan (1996) developed an Aspiration Index which assesses the importance of different goals for different people. The aspirations are divided into intrinsic and extrinsic goals. The intrinsic goals provided are self-acceptance, affiliation, community feeling, and physical fitness. The goals deemed to be extrinsic are financial success, attractiveness, and popularity. To prevent hiring newscasters motivated by social recognition it may be beneficial to administer the Aspiration Index or a similar test during the screening process. If a person is shown to be highly motivated by popularity and financial success, it would seem prudent to not endow them with the responsibility of delivering the news, as their stories may be affected by the desire for popularity and social approval.
