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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Brian Williams Whines About Fake News

Brian Williams — who was bounced from his NBC anchor job for fabricating stories — is furious about the spread of “fake news.”

The talking head, who was forced to take a six-month vacation last year before being permanently relieved of his “Nightly News” duties on NBC, railed about the ­epidemic of “fake news” in his late-night MSNBC cable show this week.

“Fake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience,” he whined Tuesday night on “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams.”

Specifically, Williams singled out President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, and the general’s son, Michael G. Flynn, for spreading falsehoods.

But Williams is hardly a model of honest journalism. He was punished in February 2015 for falsely claiming during a broadcast a month earlier to have been aboard a helicopter that was struck by enemy fire during a flight in Iraq.

Questions were also raised about Williams’ coverage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Williams claimed he could see bodies amid flooding from his hotel room in the French Quarter, but the New Orleans ­Advocate reported that the area had been largely spared in the catastrophe and ­experienced little flooding.

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