NBC Anchor Brian Williams Sparks Doubt About Hurricane Katrina Coverage After Admitting Iraq Helicopter Story Was Fake
Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC's flagship "Nightly News," continued to take flak on Friday, this time over his account of the network's Hurricane Katrina coverage, USA Today reported.
Williams admitted on Thursday he had not been aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by enemy fire during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was a claim he had made repeatedly over several years, according to Stars and Stripes.
The New Orleans Advocate is now scrutinizing Williams' comments about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Louisiana city in 2005.
"You look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down," Williams said at one point during a 2006 interview with former Disney executive Michael Eisner as he recalled his experience in New Orleans. "You see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country."
But other sources allege there were no corpses floating through the historic district, which sits on higher ground and was spared the devastating floodwaters that affected other neighborhoods when the levees broke, Yahoo News noted.
The French Quarter was largely dry, former city health director Brobson Lutz agreed. Lutz, who during Katrina manned an EMS trailer that was set up in the city's historic section, told the New Orleans Advocate he considered himself a fan of the NBC anchor but remained doubtful of Williams' claims.
"We were never wet. It was never wet," he said of the events in the French Quarter.
In some accounts, Williams apparently also claimed to have contracted a dangerous inflammation of the intestine during the coverage.
"I accidentally ingested some of the flood water; I became very sick with dysentery," Williams told journalism icon Tom Brokaw at the Columbia School of Journalism in June, according to the New York Daily News.
Lutz said, "[I] saw a lot of people with cuts and bruises and such, but I don't recall a single, solitary case of gastroenteritis during Katrina or in the whole month afterward." The physician's dogs drank floodwaters and, he said, "they didn't have any problems."
A spokesman for NBC did not immediately respond to questions about Williams' comments.
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