Posted on 02/11/2015 4:33:21 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The issue for me regarding the Brian Williams controversy is whether he made a mistake or intentionally misled people by making a claim he knew was false, i.e., lied. To conclude that a mistake is actually a lie requires a lot of proof. Otherwise, if there is a possible explanation of an honest memory mistake, I give the person the benefit of the doubt.
Williams said that in 2003, he was in a helicopter forced down by enemy fire — a mistaken recollection, as he told Stars and Stripes on Feb. 4. He said that the mistake was a result of “constant viewing” of video showing him inspecting the impact area of the helicopters downed in the incident and “the fog of memory over 12 years made me conflate the two, and I apologize.”
There is substantial memory research that suggests Williams could have unintentionally suffered a precise type of memory distortion.
Harvard University professor Daniel Schacter, who has been doing memory research for more than 30 years, told the Los Angeles Times about a common memory error that resembles what Williams has described as “conflation” — “when people combine bits and pieces of things that happened into an event that never happened, but contains elements of what really did happen. It’s possible something along these lines occurred here.”
Memory research professor Lawrence Patihis of the University of California, Irvine told a New Republic reporter about his study in which he mentioned video footage of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. One in five participants said they remembered seeing it. No such footage exists.
“In the case of Brian Williams,” Patihis said, “perhaps he revisited the news story many years after the 2003 incident, and perhaps the footage he saw was incorrectly woven into a new narrative of what happened. ... We should take care before assuming deliberate deception here. As a memory researcher, I find it credible that Brian Williams had a genuine memory error.”
Take the case of one of the helicopter pilots, Richard Krell, who told CNN last Thursday that he was flying the helicopter that Williams was on in Iraq in 2003. While he contradicted Williams’s claim that that helicopter had taken fire and was forced down, he also said that the three helicopters in the formation, which included the one Williams was on, came under “small arms fire.”
Yet the very next day, on Friday morning, Krell read about other helicopter pilots telling The New York Times that they, not Krell, had piloted Williams’s helicopter and, unlike Krell, did not recall their convoy coming under fire. Krell texted CNN media reporter Brian Stelter: “The information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this point I am questioning my memories.”
You read that correctly.
The media seems to have ignored this. Why is Krell allowed to make an honest mistake of memory, while Williams is not? Double standard?
It would be fair if everyone could withhold judgment and let NBC complete its investigation of this incident and any other alleged discrepancies in Williams’s prior reporting. Even better, NBC might consider bringing in a credible outside investigator to review the results or conduct his or her own investigation.
Then, I hope that NBC and Williams will follow Crisis Management Rule 101 and be completely transparent: Publish the results of the investigation(s) and make Williams and everyone with any involvement in this incident — the camera crew, producers back home, management in New York — available to answer every possible question from the media.
Some might be convinced it was an honest memory error; some may never be convinced. But I hope, if no new examples of proven distortions surface, that Brian Williams will be allowed to go back to work and can re-earn the trust that so many of us have had in him over the years. If so, we will not lose this good man and great journalist on the air every night on “NBC Nightly News.”
Davis served as special counsel to former President Clinton and is principal in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, and is executive vice president of the strategic communications firm LEVICK. He is the author of Crisis Tales: Five Rules for Coping with Crises in Business, Politics, and Life.
Lanny is a klinton colostomy bag.
"Last Wednesday, Williams, one of NBC's biggest stars, recanted his longtime claim of being aboard a helicopter forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that Williams was nowhere near that aircraft — but on another aircraft that took no fire.
Williams, who apologized on his nightly newscast, told Stars and Stripes: "I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another."
"Is it really more important that Brian Williams has a certain type of character and honesty than a presidential candidate or secretary of state?" said Attkisson, a former CBS News reporter.
"I don't know, that's up to the American people to decide, but clearly they got past it in the case of Hillary Clinton, although it was never explained. We'll see if people can get past it in the case of Brian Williams."
Clinton's gaff came during her 2008 run for the White House, when she claimed she and her staff had dodged sniper fire on an airport landing strip in Bosnia. But news video of the event revealed it never happened. Special: Are You Sabotaging Your Heart With Statin Drugs? Attkisson, author of "Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington," published by Harper, said Williams' lie was on that trip with Clinton and that the Williams case is "strangely" reminiscent.
"In both cases, the attempt at a mea culpa initially kind of almost made things worse," she said.
"With Hillary Clinton, after the video was found that there was no sniper fire, there was no apparent danger on the runway as she claims, she doubled down and said, 'Well, I stopped and you saw pictures of me greeting the young girl, because how could I walk past her and break her little heart? But after that I ran to the car.
"So I was assigned to do a second day story by [the CBS] Evening News … that showed more video that too wasn't true, and when she knew we had the video it is just beyond me that she continued to tell this tale."
Attkisson said the video showed that Clinton "lingered on the runway, took pictures with a group of seventh graders, visited with the troops, [and] took photographs with them.
"There was no apparent danger to us, there was no mention of it, there was no corkscrew landing, there was no sniper fire," she said.
"You kind of wonder in both instances … how they got away for so long with telling the story and how they thought that they would get away with it without somebody coming to them, family members and so on, saying that didn't happen.".........
Maybe Brian and Hillary had a bit too much medical marijuana on John Kerry’s Christmas swift boat?
Henry F. Schuelke, a lawyer for Mrs. Huber, said tonight that she found the records in a storage area in the third-floor private residence at the White House where unsolicited gifts to the President and First Lady are stored before being sorted and catalogued.
Mr. Schuelke said Mrs. Huber did not know who placed the records in the storage area or how long the material might have been there. "It could have been there for months," he said. "She has no idea how long it was there."
He said she discovered the material after she had brought the documents, along with some of the unsolicited gifts, to her own office in the White House East Wing.
When she examined the documents, Mr. Shuelke said, she realized the materials might be relevant to the various inquiries. Mr. Schuelke said she then called him and alerted Mr. Kendall.
Mr. Kendall declined to say why Mrs. Huber had been going through the files or how the Rose documents could have come into the possession of the White House in the first place. He also declined to answer questions about why they were not discovered sooner......."
Just as with hillary, if these are “real mistakes” the person making them doesn’t belong as a news anchor or presidential candidate. Accurately remembering events should be part of the job resume for both.
2007: “ In a chandeliered room at the Justice Department, the longtime head of the counterespionage section, the chief of the public integrity unit, a deputy assistant attorney general, some trial lawyers and a few FBI agents all looked down at their pant legs and socks.
While waving his own leg in the air in illustration, Paul Brachfeld, inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration, asked the group rhetorically if “something white” could be easily mistaken if it was wrapped around their legs, beneath their pant legs.
Under debate during the Nov. 23, 2004, meeting was Brachfeld’s contention that President Clinton’s former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger could have stolen original, uncatalogued, highly classified terrorism documents 14 months earlier by wrapping them around his socks and beneath his pants, as National Archives staff member John Laster reported witnessing.
Brachfeld said he was worried that during four visits in 2002 and 2003, Berger had the opportunity to remove more than the five documents he admitted taking. Brachfeld wanted the Justice Department to notify officials of the 9/11 Commission that Berger’s actions — in combination with a bungled Archives response — might have obstructed the commission’s review of Clinton’s terrorism policies.”..................
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001344.html
Hello IRS, about that unreported income.........
We should take care before assuming deliberate deception here. As a memory researcher, I find it credible that Brian Williams had a genuine memory error.”
This guy and his idiotic argument would carry, maybe slightly, more weight if we could remember anyone EVER advancing it when the memory faculty of Ronald Reagan or George Bush was the subject. The kind of thing this cheap whore excuse maker is talking about does NOT occur in instances involving imminent obliteration.
Lammy Davis has been hit in the head once too many times by liberal butt cheeks. Either that or he is lying just like Williams and Clinton. Or a combination.
Pattently ridiculous statement. If it is in no way reasonable that a person of sound mental health could so confuse issues such as "being hit by an RPG", "dodging sniper fire", or "having sex with that woman". Then all I need to know that it is a willful lie, is proof that the facts of the statement are not true.
Only lawyers accept that its resonable for a grown person to confuse profound facts. Grown people misremember whether they were driving a Cadilac or a BMW. They do not misremember whether they jumped the car over a river, aka Dukes of Hazard style.
Lanny Davis has always been the go to Clinton pawn chess piece and the first salvo in their corrupt deceitful narrative talking tours in the press,
Here he is throwing rose petals down ahead of hilarys path before the queen is forced to walk across the muddy sidewalk like some commoner,
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.