The news this past week that Brian Williams will take a leave of absence from his job at NBC raises many questions about how facts are reported and how stories are told.

Williams’ story begins during the early stages of the Iraq war in 2003. He said he was in a situation where he, along with other U.S. troops, was entering Iraq when the helicopter he was in came under intensive rocket-propelled grenade fire, forcing the pilot to conduct an emergency landing. We know now that this journalist’s war story is not true. Equally fascinating though, is the way he perpetuated the lie, continuing to tell a story he knew to be untrue. Not to mention the amount of time Williams chose to extend this story, keeping it going for over 10 years.

Since the story broke, Williams has publicly apologized both on and off the air. In a Facebook comment, he said that Lance Reynolds, the helicopter’s flight engineer, was “absolutely right” regarding what had actually happened and that he himself had made a “mistake.” Instead, he was in the other helicopter, not the one that was attacked. To justify his actions, Williams proceeded with a half-hearted excuse and said, “The fog of memory over 12 years made me conflate the two, and I apologize.”

If indeed his memory was fogged, why did Williams feel the compulsory need to embellish his war story for as long as he did? Moreover, this on the ground, in the moment reporting shouldn’t be hard to recall, especially if the lives of men and women in uniform, and in this case, a journalist, are at risk. When a person comes under attack, whether on the ground or in the air, one would think that such an event sticks with the person who experienced it.

When the topic of Brian Williams was brought up on HBO’s “Real Time,” Marianne Williamson responded by saying, “The entire American news establishment would be fired if telling the truth was the minimum standard.”

This is not the issue. This comment however seems to equate Williams’ actions with other reporters who get the facts wrong. Fact checking is part of reporting. Page A2 of the New York Times is almost entirely devoted to correcting the mistakes of past stories. There is a fundamental difference between falsifying an anecdotal account and misinterpreting the facts.

Lara Logan’s botched story about Benghazi, and Judith Miller’s ineffectual and unsupported assertions regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, both of which were not only embarrassing, but potentially problematic, is different than retelling a story you know to be false. And of course, the blatant falsification of one’s story for political gain is nothing new. Whether it is Hillary Clinton claiming that she landed in Bosnia amidst sniper fire or Richard Blumenthal retelling fictitious war stories about his time in Vietnam, it seems as if a pattern has emerged where public figures create stories that didn’t really happen.

The dilemma involving Williams has ignited a greater debate about the journalist as a celebrity – the one who embellishes facts in an effort to make him or herself seem like a hero in shaping the news, and for that matter, the course of history. Many are right to think that Williams is more than just a news anchor – he has appeared on late night television shows, including the Daily Show as well as Saturday Night Live. And yet his universal respect and appeal didn’t stop him from echoing the sentiment he is currently apologizing for. On the evening news last week, he recalled the “terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an R.P.G.”

Williams knowingly embellished and passed off a story he knew from the beginning not to be true. By doing this, he willfully misled his viewers in order to bolster his own credentials. Williams has come a long way from misreporting facts. For the past 10 years, Williams was his own source on the matter, and instead of doing the right thing, he continued to perpetuate a lie. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times was right when she said, “News anchors are not figures of authority.” This is especially true when society has to investigate the investigator, a situation where a man overplayed his hand, and kept on talking about it.

Isaac Simon is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].