The media just assumes its letters to politicians won’t be made public. Wrong. It happens. In this case, the media shamefully sucked up to ex-Ill Gov. Blago to get interviews.
By John Cook
Gawker
On the morning he was arrested on corruption charges last December, Rod Blagojevich was the nation’s biggest greaseball. So obviously, the national press was willing to say anything to land an interview. And we’ve got their emails to prove it.
We reported a little over a month ago that the Today show had booked Blagojevich to appear on the morning he happened to be arrested by the FBI, but bumped the interview so they could flack for Jay Leno’s new show.
We found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request to the state of Illinois asking for e-mails from representatives of the media to Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich’s press secretary (we got the idea from South Carolina’s The State, which did the same thing-to comic effect-after Mark Sanford’s Argentinian Rhapsody).
