West MD
Brian Williams, an American journalist who had for ten years served as anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News was recently suspended for six months for "misrepresent[ing]" events which he claimed occurred during his coverage of the Iraq War in 2003. While many have questioned why Williams, a well-known and widely respected broadcast journalist, would have fabricated the degree of risk he faced in his war coverage, few have considered that he might have unwittingly, rather than deliberately, misrepresented events in the past. Autobiographical memory, however, is highly susceptible to a variety of influences which can create false memories. While researchers have, for obvious reasons, created benign memories, cases exist in which individuals have been tried for crimes which in retrospect seem ludicrous. I argue that, whatever the reason for Brian Williams’ exaggeration of the level of threat which he faced in Iraq in 2003, the implications of such exaggerations for communication research are sobering.
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