The Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier has 570 pages of material [pdf] from around the time of Governor Mark Sanford’s trip to Argentina supplied to the newspaper in response to a public records request to the governor’s office. Via TPM.
On June 24, 2009 David Gregory at NBC e-mailed Joel Sawyer, Communications Director for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Here is a series from David Gregory:
(12:24:17 PM)
Hey Joel…
Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet the Press. I think it’s exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.
Let’s talk when you can…
(6:02:52 PM)
You aren’t doing anything at all this week….no other intvus anywhere?
(6:13:58 PM)
Look,you guys have a lot of pitches .. I get it and I know this is a tough situation … Let me just say this is the place to have a wider conversation with some context about not just the personal but also the future for him and the party … This situation only exacerbates the issue of how the GOP recovers when another national leader suffers a setback like this. So coming on Meet the Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to…and then move on. You can see you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.
Thanks
“…So coming on Meet the Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to…”
Walter Cronkite died yesterday. And that was the end of television journalism.
It gets even better. David Shuster of MSNBC e-mailed the governor’s Communications Director on June 22nd:
(3:32 PM)
Hey Joel,
My producers want us to do a short reader on this at 4:30pm. Have you seen the Governor since last thursday? Did he have plans for the weekend? Anything unusual about this? The first lady doesn’t know where he is?
Let me know… I’d be happy to kill this story.
“…I’d be happy to kill this story.”
No one is immune. George Stephanpolous at ABC to the governor’s Communications Director on June 24th:
(10:34:01 AM)
Know you must be besieged. If Governor looking for civil forum to address this week’s events (and significantly, other policy issues), we’d love to have him on This Week…
As if disappearing is insignificant? Just asking.
Also from someone else at ABC a little earlier on June 24th:
(8:57:04 AM)
Hey Joel,
Just tried you at the office….would Gov. Sanford be able to join George this Sunday on This Week? After all the hoopla surrounding his whereabouts this past week, would be great to have him on the show to clarify everything, put a stop to the Lt. Gov’s claims, respond to the DNC ad and look ahead to the important challenges the GOP face in the months to come. Think it’d be an important step for him to address this then move forward and talk about the real issues out there…
“…would be great to have him on the show to clarify everything, put a stop to the Lt. Gov’s claims, respond to the DNC ad and look ahead to the important challenges the GOP face in the months to come…”
Yes, we’ve determined what they are, now we’re just haggling over the price.
Walter Cronnkite died at age 92 yesterday. And evidently television journalism died before that.
Stalin would be envious of the republican’s having managed to get Big Media to volunteer their services. No wonder they allow themselves to be incorrectly labeled as “liberal”. The misconception helps distance them from the truth of their actions.
Yeah sure the press wanted to help kill the story.They wanted to milk it for all it was worth….that was just their come on pitch. Although I do agree that the sympathies of the MSM are with the conservatives and the suggestion that they are liberal is laughable.
why the American public appreciated Cronkite, as well as Murrow, for their genuine emotional connection to what they reported and for their occasional bravery. Cronkite told the truth about Viet Nam, but then again, that was after anybody not drinking the Kool Aid knew that war was lost. Murrow stood up to McCarthy. It wasn’t easy. But television journalism has always had a severe limp. I wouldn’t say it was still born, but consider that Cronkite wouldn’t have dared report any of the evidence that the U.S. backed Pinochet’s takeover in Chile. Nor did Murrow report, in 1953, that the CIA, under Allen Dulles, overthrew a democratically elected president in Guatemala because Arbenz had angered United Fruit by allowing unions to start organizing.
In the decades from the birth of TV news through Cronkite’s tenure, if you wanted to know the truth about what was happening, you read The Nation or Mother Jones. At least now we have Olbermann and Maddow–though they can both be a little over the top.
…at MediaMatters: