\u201cFake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience,\u201d<\/em> Williams said on MSNBC on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n He went on to mention retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn \u2013 President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s pick for national security adviser \u2013 for promoting links to fake news stories on his Twitter account.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Those\u00a0\u201cgems,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0as Williams called them, included claims that Hillary Clinton was involved in a child sex ring and that US President Barack Obama laundered money from Muslim terrorists.<\/p>\n But they say those in glass houses should not throw stones \u2013 and when it comes to spreading fake news, there is no denying that Williams has done the same.<\/p>\n The former anchor of NBC Nightly News was suspended without pay in 2015, eventually losing his job, after admitting that he had lied about a story in which three Chinook helicopters came under fire in Iraq in 2003.<\/p>\n Although Williams claimed that he was in one of the helicopters, it later emerged that he was actually traveling in a different helicopter, located about an hour behind the other three.<\/p>\n He was caught out after crew members from the helicopters that were actually hit came forward.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Williams\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0Stars and Stripes newspaper in 2015.<\/p>\n Following Williams\u2019 apology on his Nightly News program, NBC launched an internal investigation to look into other statements made by the journalist.<\/p>\n Although the results of the investigation were never made public, The Washington Post\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0at the time that the Iraq claim was one of 11\u00a0\u201csuspect statements\u201d<\/em>\u00a0made by Williams.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Despite his problems at NBC, another station later gave Williams another chance, awarding him the position of chief breaking news anchor a few months later.<\/p>\n \u201cI am fully aware of the second chance I have been given,\u201d<\/em> Williams told NBC\u2019s \u2018Today Show\u2019 after being hired by MSNBC.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the notion of \u2018fake news\u2019 continues to dominate headlines, with Hillary Clinton \u2013 the target of several false stories \u2013 calling the situation a \u201cdanger that must be addressed and addressed quickly\u201d<\/em> on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not about politics or partisanship,\u201d<\/em> Clinton said during a tribute to departing Senate minority leader Harry Reid. \u201cLives are at risk. Lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Clinton\u2019s statements come after a fake news story alleging that she was running a child sex ring from the backrooms of a Washington DC pizzeria led to a dangerous incident<\/a>\u00a0inside the restaurant, after a man who believed the story began shooting a rifle in an effort to \u201cself-investigate\u201d<\/em> the claim. The story, dubbed \u2018Pizzagate,\u2019 has led to the pizzeria\u2019s staff and other nearby business owners receiving death threats.<\/p>\n Donald Trump fired<\/a>\u00a0the son of his national security adviser choice, Michael T. Flynn, on Tuesday, allegedly for his role in spreading the \u2018Pizzagate\u2019 scandal online.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Journalist Brian Williams has become the latest person to slam \u2018fake news,\u2019 claiming it influenced the US election. But there\u2019s some irony in his apparent defense of quality journalism, as he was let go from his NBC gig last year for\u2026 reporting fake news. \u201cFake news played a role in this election and continues to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":283540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-283539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"\u00a9\u00a0Jonathan](\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.12\/thumbnail\/5849375dc461881b228b4585.jpg\")
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