3-stars respond to allegations of media manipulation
Army Times
By Kevin Lilley, Staff writer
October 1, 2015
"The primary purpose of the FOIA act is to find out what the government is up to,” Hodes said. “Nowhere does it say the government should be spinning what they’re up to. … The facts speak for themselves.”
The three-star generals at the center of a recent New York Times piece that alleges the service attempted to manipulate media coverage of medical issues have taken issue with the reporting — specifically, the Army's reporting.
In statements to the newspaper and to Army Times, both Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, the Army's surgeon general, and Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, found fault with the Army-produced executive summary of their Sept. 17 meeting at the Pentagon. That summary was leaked to The New York Times, which quoted from the material in its Tuesday report.
Per the summary, Horoho recommended that Caslen not provide the newspaper with West Point concussion statistics requested under the Freedom of Information Act until her office published a related article that would include some of the data. She relayed an account of a prior media FOIA request where coverage was softened by a media event days before the data release.
"Timing is everything with this stuff," the summary reads.
Through a spokesman, Horoho denied ever advising anyone to delay the FOIA request. Caslen, in a statement initially provided to The New York Times and excerpted in the initial report, said "a member of my staff inaccurately portrayed my discussion with Lt. Gen. Horoho" and took responsibility for allowing the document to be "distributed without my review."
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Brian Williams Shows Freedom to Lie
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 8, 2015
Brian Williams only became the story because he made it that way. There is a huge trust issue in this country because time and time again the freedom of the press has become freedom to lie and manipulate what they tell us. The veterans involved in all of this have been trying to get the truth out and have finally been given the opportunity to do it thanks to Stars and Stripes reporters. The truth was still true even though no one would listen to them.
Williams in just one of many not telling us the truth about what is really going on. We sent troops into Iraq because reporters came out with phony stories and passed them off as facts. What is even more damning is that they have been doing it all while the internet users have enabled them to do it.
They are still doing it on the issue of suicides tied to military service. The evidence has shown a massive fraud on the public yet the lies live on and veterans paid for these lies with their lives. The 22 a day report is false and has been proven as state after state report the suicides of veterans is double the civilian population rate. Younger veterans are triple their peer rate after years of the military telling us they were doing all they could with "suicide prevention" even as numbers proved it was not working. They don't talk about veterans all across the country facing off with police and SWAT Teams, their accidents and overdoses. Why?
They don't report on how many bills members of congress not only passed but paid for repeatedly as we watched more funerals and more families turn to members of congress for help only to be told they would do something while withholding they already did the exact same thing years before and failed more veterans.
Now, again, as we were led to believe that Williams simply "misremembered" what happened, we are reminded that he "misremembered" it when he told us it had just happened. The New York Times has the video of his reporting from Iraq when he first made the claims.
This happened February 2, 2015
Published on Feb 2, 2015
Brian Williams and Command Sgt. Major Tim Terpak thought it was going to be a night for them to catch up over a game, but the Rangers had other plans.
This is from Stars and Stripes
Soldiers offer eyewitness accounts of the Brian Williams Chinook story
Stars and Stripes
Travis J Tritten
February 6, 2015
NBC News anchor Brian Williams has told a war story over the years since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It grew to where he was claiming to be on a Chinook helicopter that was forced down after taking rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire.
In his on-air apology Wednesday, he backed off that, but said that he “was instead in a following aircraft.”
Soldiers who were in two Chinook companies say he was not in, nor ever near, a helicopter that was being fired upon:
“I can say with 100 percent certainty that no NBC reporters were on any of the aircraft.”
— Jerry Pearman, a veteran who was a lieutenant colonel and the mission commander when one of the three Chinooks in Big Windy Company came under rocket and small-arms fire
“This is etched pretty well into my brain … We had just entered the battle so that was Day 1 for us.”
— Pearman
“Over the years it faded and then to see it last week it was I can’t believe [Williams] is still telling this false narrative … He was definitely on those other aircraft.”
— Mike O’Keeffe, veteran who was the door gunner on the Big Windy Company Chinook hit by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire
“It is not about the glory or anything. There are people who did things that day … To go out and talk like you were on that aircraft — and [Williams] wasn’t — and not acknowledge what that [Chinook] pilot did [to keep the crew safe] is horrible.”
— O’Keeffe read more here Brian Williams Faces ‘Fact-Checking’ Inquiry at NBC
New York Times
By EMILY STEEL
FEB. 6, 2015
Before the episode, Mr. Williams long had been considered one of the most trusted people in not only in the news business but in the country as a whole.
If Mr. Williams is forced to step down, it would be a huge blow to the news division, which is in a cutthroat ratings race with the rival networks. In this season to date, NBC has averaged 9.3 million total viewers for its nightly broadcast, compared with 8.7 million for ABC and 7.3 million for CBS, according to Nielsen.
In addition to tarnishing Mr. Williams’s once pristine reputation, the scandal has led to broader questions about the management and the credibility of NBC’s news operations.
“NBC’s credibility is damaged by this because their principal news figurehead, which is really what an anchorman is, had some clear credibility questions distinguishing the truth from the reality,” said Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, who previously worked at NBC News.
The latest tumult also represents another setback for Ms. Turness. Since joining NBC in 2013, she has had to remove David Gregory as host of “Meet the Press” because of low ratings, ending his two-decade career at the network. She also had to scramble to find a new head for the “Today” morning show after firing Jamie Horowitz only 10 weeks after she had hired him. The network also was heavily criticized this fall when its chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, violated a self-imposed quarantine after being exposed to Ebola in Liberia.
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