How Not to Be the Next Brian Williams

Slate:

For years, Brian Williams told various versions of a story about his experiences during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Last week, he admitted he had gotten crucial facts wrong, and he apologized. It’s possible that Williams was lying all along for self-aggrandizing reasons, but his serial misstatements could also be the product of ordinary, unintentional memory distortion. We may never know which is true. But the scientific evidence for the fallibility of human memory is now so well established and widespread that claims of false memory should no longer earn anyone a free pass. Any responsible storytellers—any who believe they owe their first allegiance to the truth—should recognize the limits of their own memory and the risk of self-serving memory distortions. We must all change the way we work to ensure that we get the facts right, knowing that our memories might be wrong.

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