Gawker turns tables on press with public records request

You live by the public records request, you die by the public records request.

John Cook at a Web site called Gawker has turned the tables on the press, especially The New York Times.

Cook and/or Gawker filed a public records request for e-mails between former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s press aides and the press about the time Spitzer was being outed as Client No. 9 in a prostitution ring investigation.  What was found was a remarkably accommodating press.

Gawker also obtained e-mails between the press and flacks for the current governor, David Paterson.

This is a snippet of what Cook writes about the findings:

“And they give the lie to the myth of the vigilant watchdog press that keeps the government on its toes. Next time you hear New York Times editor Bill Keller claim that newspapers are uniquely situated to do the "hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work [of] quality journalism," remember that his reporter broke the story of Spitzer's dalliances with prostitutes. But also remember the time his reporter e-mailed the Gov. Paterson's flack to request permission to call Paterson's former mistress.

“This first installment documents the shocking amount of control that Keller's Times allowed Anderson, a former Good Morning America producer and PR veteran of the Clinton White House, to exercise over his paper's coverage. After bringing Anderson's world down around her head by breaking the story, Times reporters previewed portions of their stories with her before publication, asked for her permission before contacting sources, and let her tell them how to characterize its reporting in the paper.”

It will be interesting to see what else those 1,300 pages of e-mails reveal.

Memo to self and staff: Be careful what you write to people whose e-mail is subject to public records requests.