( - promoted by Juan Melli)
Two weeks ago we noticed a contradiction between two published stories relating Chris Christie's version of how he learned he was on the list of US Attorney's to be fired, and how he got off the list. The stories were so diametrically opposed that we felt comfortable calling them a lie.
We're no longer comfortable calling it a lie, but we are now quite sure there is a three part contradiction. The problem is that we no longer know why there is such a glaring contradiction, or who made the contradiction. It could be a bad reporting error, or it could have been Mr. Christie. We just don't know.
At issue is what was really said in the Editorial Board meeting. The Daily Record's Michael Daigle first reported on August 3 that Mr. Christie said in the meeting that he was notified in December he was on the list, and then in January he was off the list. This conflicted with previous stories that quoted Mr. Christie saying he found out at one time in March.
Such a contradiction is important because of the long history of misstatements, contradictions and outright fibs by the people involved in the firing of as many as eight US Attorneys in late 2006. After more than eight months of hearings, reporting and subpoenas we are no closer to learning the truth regarding that political partisan use of the Department of Justice and its US Attorneys than we were at the beginning all because of the obfuscation and lies. If, in fact, US Attorney Christie was lying about his part in the unfolding drama it is an important story. So Blue Jersey pursued it.
Blue Jersey e-mailed an editor at the Daily Record who was in the meeting if he could explain the contradiction, and he replied:
Yes, I was in the room. I am afraid I can not explain the inconsistency
We took that as a confirmation that Mr. Christie had indeed made the December/January claim and continued to pursue the story. This second source was why we were comfortable calling the contradiction a lie on Mr. Christie's part, and is one of the reasons we are reluctant to determine that a retraction is necessary.
The following Sunday, August 5, the Daily Record published (firewalled) what appears to be an edited transcript of the meeting that makes no reference to a timetable, and never mentions December, January or March in any context. This is the only reference to the lists:
Q: Your name was on "the list" of U.S. attorneys to be fired, was it not?
A: I talked to the deputy attorney general. He didn't give me an explanation as to why I was on the list, or why I was taken off. I dodged a bullet, and I'm still here and I still have a job to do. I decided to move on. In some people's minds, I was not loyal enough, too independent. I don't really know. They didn't give me an explanation. And I'm not really pursuing one.
Then on Thursday, August 9 the Daily Record published a retraction that maintains during the Editorial Board meeting Mr. Christie said he'd learned of his place on the list in March.
U.S. Attorney Chris Christie said he learned he had been on -- and then taken off -- the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired last March. A story Friday gave an incorrect date.
In three published versions of this story based on one conversation the Daily Record claims that Chris Christie: - Said he learned in December 2006 he was on the list, and in January 2007 he was off the list;
- Did not mention a date when he learned he was on or off the list; and
- Said he learned he was on and off the list in March.
In an August 13 e-mail to Blue Jersey founder Juan Melli, Chris Christie's public relations officer, Michael Drewniak, maintains that because of the August 9 retraction that there is no contradiction and:
Given that the sole source of your commentary was wrong and has been corrected by the Daily Record, it seems reasonable, and in the interests of fairness and accuracy, that you remove the same inaccuracies from your website.
But as we noted earlier, in addition to the article, we had a second confirmation from an editor at the paper. We have confirmed the correction with the Daily Record, and they claim that it was reporter error. But that doesn't explain how one meeting with five news professionals interviewing a subject could produce three separate stories with different facts in just one week, and it was not our sole source. The correction itself doesn't note that the Sunday story containing Mr. Christie's actual words mentioned no date at all, and that the correction itself is not accurate in that it references a date in the original story instead of dates.
 There is only one group of folks, pictured to the right, who can tell us for sure what the story here is. In the larger version of this picture on the Daily Record site you can see four Daily Record news pros actively taking notes, another listening attentively to Mr. Christie, and there appears to be a tape recorder in the room. With that many people taking notes and a possible record of the meeting, this should be easy to clarify.
All the Daily Record has to do is publish a verbatim transcript of the meeting. Editorial Boards are on the record, and Mr. Christie knew going in that anything he said could be made public. There is no source protection here, and no first amendment issue. The only news policy that may be at hand is that newspapers shouldn't allow outside sources to tell them what to publish.
Another way to clear this up is for Mr. Christie to issue a statement to Blue Jersey saying that he never told the December/January story at the Daily Record Executive Board meeting. Blue Jersey requested such a statement from Mr. Drewniak, but he has without explanation resisted doing so.
If the Daily Record is not willing to release the full record of the Editorial Board, and Chris Christie is not willing to issue a statement on what happened we are left with a mishmash of confusing stories that cannot be cleared up. The reluctance to provide the meeting record by the newspaper or a denial by the subject raises suspicions that there may be some backscratching going on. After all, here is how the interview ended according to the Sunday partial transcript.
Q: This is the part of this process where you get a chance to speak to the New York area baseball fans. You can tell them propaganda. Tell them something.
A: Listen, I'm a season ticket holding, unabashed Met fan. When you're a Met fan, you understand pain and disappointment. And life is full of pain and disappointment. You're prepared. If you're a Yankee fan, you've known nothing but joy. I own season tickets with my brother and I'm over there (Shea Stadium) a lot.
Q; Do you know the difference between a Shea Stadium hot dog and a Yankee Stadium frank?
A: No.
Q: You can get a Yankee Stadium frank in October.
A: See, this is why Met fans hate Yankee fans.
Because of the massive confusion around this story we must reluctantly give Mr. Drewniak a retraction of our claim that we caught Chris Christie in a lie. But we are not willing to say that Chris Christie didn't lie, because we don't know that as a fact. At this point we just don't know anything for certain. We simply have no idea what the heck went on in that room, and what story Mr. Christie told the Daily Record.
We don't know, because they won't tell us. |
