More heroic tales of Brian Williams‘ adventures in journalism are being questioned.
The NBC news anchor, who apologized Wednesday for telling a false story about taking fire in a helicopter while covering Iraq, is being called out for possibly lying about his experience covering Hurricane Katrina, according to a report.
Williams claimed to have gotten dysentery from drinking floodwater and seeing dead bodies float past his hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter while covering Hurricane Katrina.
However, the The New Orleans Advocate noted that the French Quarter was not flooded and quoted a local health expert who did not recall anyone getting such a stomach ailment.
Williams recalled his bout with the bug in an interview with Tom Brokaw last year, when he said: “I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery.”
The Advocate said a public health official never heard of people getting things like dysentery after the storm.
“I don’t recall a single, solitary case of gastroenteritis during Katrina or in the whole month afterward,” Dr. Brobson Lutz told The Advocate.
“I don’t know anybody that’s tried that [drinking floodwater] to see, but my dogs drank it, and they didn’t have any problems.”
Williams said also during an interview in 2006 that he saw dead bodies float past his window in the French Quarter.
“When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country,” Williams said in 2006.
But the French Quarter, the original high ground of New Orleans, was not impacted by the floodwaters that overwhelmed the vast majority of the city, The Advocate said.
He also said in his Brokaw interview: “Our hotel was overrun with gangs, I was rescued in the stairwell of a five-star hotel in New Orleans by a young police officer. We are friends to this day.”
The new revelation came as revered broadcast journalist Brokaw said Williams should step aside.