Critics are questioning stories NBC News anchor Brian Williams told about his experience reporting on Hurricane Katrina, just days after he admitted that he told an untrue story for years about his time reporting from Iraq.
In particular, bloggers have honed in on a story Williams has told about seeing a body float by his hotel in the French Quarter, The New Orleans Advocate reported Friday.
“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 a 2006 interview.
The Advocate reported that the French Quarter — a historic neighborhood popular with tourists — never flooded in the way other districts of the city did. A Federal Emergency Management Agency document says that flood levels in the French Quarter were low or nonexistent.
The paper also scrutinized Williams’s claim that he had contracted dysentery after accidentally drinking floodwater. The paper quoted a man who had provided medical assistance to people during the storm as saying he hadn’t seen a single case of dysentery in the month after the storm.
The anchor’s award-winning coverage of the hurricane was a milestone for him and cemented his credibility, as he took over the “NBC Nightly News” anchor chair from Tom Brokaw.
A spokeswoman for NBC News did not respond to a request for comment on the Advocate’s story.
The scrutiny of his Katrina story originated on conservative blogs, after he admitted to telling the false story about Iraq.
This week, the longtime NBC anchor admitted a story he had told in various forms for years about being on a helicopter in Iraq that was hit by a rocket propelled grenade was untrue.
“I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” he said during an on-air apology on Wednesday.