I would be surprised if any of you regularly watched the nightly news on NBC. After all, we’re the generation that gets its news from social media and Jon Stewart, not traditional broadcast anchors that come on after dinner. Even so, most of you are probably familiar with Brian Williams, one of the news anchors for NBC. He is, especially as a news anchor, regarded as one of the most trustworthy men in America.

That reputation is in trouble. Here’s the story.

In 2003, Brian was onsite covering the Iraq War. A helicopter that he was in was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Usually, that would be the end of the chopper and all those inside it. Miraculously, however, Brian’s helicopter survived and made it the rest of the trip safely.

Except for the first sentence, that entire last paragraph was a lie. Yes, Brian was onsite covering the war. Everything else, though, is false. There was a helicopter that was hit by an RPG, but it was an hour ahead of Brian’s. A fellow passenger on the news anchor’s chopper has come forward and stated point-blank that their ride was untouched. Williams has said that he remembered the incident wrong, even going so far as to say that his mind was affected by the “fog of war”.

That is disgusting. Our men and women serving in our military are out there every day fighting, struggling and dying while Brian Williams sits in his plush executive chair in his comfortable studio in New York and invents stories about how heroic he was under fire and the “connection” he felt to our real servicemen and women.

Williams is not risking himself for our country. He is not sacrificing his entire life so that others can live theirs. He is not putting himself in harm’s way to save another’s life. Our military is, however, every single day, for less money than McDonald’s workers would make if they got the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour, according to think tank 538 and data from the Army.

Again, as I discuss all the time, what connection does this have to us as college students? Why does this matter?

Because truth matters. Because the public figures we trust should be trustworthy. Put it in this perspective: what if you all were to find out that I, for example, was secretly lying about my grades? You’d never trust me again. And I would deserve it. (For the record, I am not lying about my grades.)

So, Brian Williams had our trust. And he’s lost it. It remains to be seen whether or not he will ever truly apologize for his actions, or just continue making excuses.