Brian Williams A Modern Day Socrates

Brian Williams was used as a scapegoat. This means that he was singled of a lot of people (including Hillary Clinton and Bill O’ Reilly) who had lied but he was the only one who was punished. Socrates was also singled out by the Athenian government for his ideas and corrupting the youth even though there were a lot of other philosophers and people who had crazier ideas than him and were worse. Socrates and Brian Williams both were accused of corrupting people’s mind and telling them lies. The type of knowledge is not as important as the fact that, with the Modern Socratic Method, the knowledge gained is specifically anticipated by the Socratic questioner. This stands in contrast to the Classic Socratic method in which the actual outcomes are unknown by all parties. Like Brian William he wasn't using his knowledge for the things that were about to happen, and the people that would questioned him will make him think that what he did was not the actual outcomes by all parties.

Socrates style of conversation involved his own denial of knowledge (Socratic irony). In these conversations, Socrates became the student and made those he questioned the teacher. Socrates rejected any attempts to pass off another person's ideas or the beliefs of the majority as truth. Socrates was not interested in the talk of others. Like Brian Williams his style of conversation involved his own denial of knowledge in ironic way as well by him knowing that if he lied and over exaggerated his stories people would be impressed.  Kids would think he is courageous and brave but he like Socrates rejected any attempts to pass off another person’s ideas or beliefs of the majority as truth.

Why The Jury Acquitted Brian Williams?

The prosecution accused Brian Williams many things, such as deceiving the public with lies, dishonoring the military and claiming valor without justification.  One of the lies he told was about travelling in a helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.  But after a veteran involved in the event questioned his story Williams admitted he was actually riding in another helicopter that was about 30 minutes behind the one that was hit.  He was also accused of lying about an additional three events.  These were flying to Iraq with SEAL Team Six, being in Berlin the day the wall fell and meeting the Pope.  None of these statements were true. The defense made several arguments for an acquittal such as saying Williams suffered from a sickness called “False Memory Syndrome”.  They also argued that NBC had used Brian Williams as an escape goat after giving him things to read off of a TelePrompTer that were lies.  In addition NBC put pressure him to lie.

Brian Williams was charged with 6 different crimes.  For three of these charges the jury voted to convict but on the other three they voted to acquit.  In order to convict Williams the jury would have had to have found him guilty on a majority of the six charges. He was acquitted of treason, corrupting others and abusing power. He was found guilty of deceiving the public, dishonoring the military and stealing valor. In the rules used for most jury trials in America Williams would have gone to jail after being convicted of three charges.  But the rules for the trial we had in class required that for a conviction the defendant had to be found guilty of more than half the charges.  Since it was a tie between conviction and acquitted Brian Williams was acquitted of all the charges.