By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 16, 2009

There are times when journalists badly want to land a hot interview.

Very badly.

A newly disclosed stash of e-mails to Mark Sanford's office shows media figures offering to be sympathetic, even sucking up, if he will grant them an exclusive. It was late June and the South Carolina governor had sparked a furor by vanishing for several days, but the world did not yet know of the affair with his Argentine soul mate.

"If you all want to speak on this publicly," a Washington Times staffer wrote, "you're welcome to Washington Times Radio. You know that you will be on friendly ground here!"

Griff Jenkins, a Fox News feature reporter and producer, wrote: "Having known the Governor for years and even worked with him when he would host radio shows for me -- I find this story and the media frenzy surrounding it to be absolutely ridiculous! Please give him my best."

Even Stephen Colbert, a South Carolina native, got into the act, starting with a joke about having declared himself governor but ending with an earnest pitch.

"I went power mad for about 40 seconds before learning that Gov. Sanford was returning today," the Comedy Central satirist wrote.

"If the Governor is looking for a friendly place to make light of what I think is a small story that got blown out of scale, I would be happy to have him on. In person here, on the phone, or in South Carolina. Stay Strong, Stephen."

Okay, it's easy to mock those who dismissed the uproar over Sanford supposedly hiking the Appalachian Trail as so much media hyperventilation. Even the Republican governor's own aides didn't know at the time that he was in Buenos Aires with his gal pal, Maria Belen Chapur.

Journalists, naturally, were checking in. The Washington Post's Fix columnist, Chris Cillizza, wrote to Sanford's communications director, Joel Sawyer: "Dude, is everything ok?"

"Yep. Slow news day," Sawyer responded.

But not for long.

The messages, obtained by South Carolina's State newspaper through a Freedom of Information request, shed light on the techniques that some journalists use to ingratiate themselves with their sources. Not everyone plays the game this way, and it is hardly unusual for reporters and bookers to promise a fair hearing or empathize with the plight of someone under fire. But the parting of the digital curtain reveals a process that its practitioners would undoubtedly rather keep from public view.

John Solomon, the Washington Times executive editor, said yesterday that the "friendly ground" e-mail from his staffer, Joseph Deoudes, contained "an inappropriate choice of words." But Solomon said Deoudes is "a marketing staffer," based outside the newsroom, who maintains that he was trying "to remind Sanford he had just been on the show a week ago." The syndicated radio program is hosted by Times columnist John McCaslin and conservative commentator Melanie Morgan.

Solomon added that the Times has "aggressively" covered the Sanford scandal and was the first news organization to report that he had an earlier romantic interlude on a congressional trip to Chile.

Jake Tapper, ABC's White House correspondent, sent an e-mail with the headline, "NBC spot was slimy," enclosing a transcript in which reporter Mike Viqueira said that "the governor with a reputation of a lone wolf, it turns out, he was simply out for a long walk."

"For the record," Tapper wrote Sawyer, "I think the TODAY Show spot was pretty insulting." In a second e-mail, Tapper described a Twitter post by NBC's David Gregory that "U should be concerned if 'your wife say(s) that she doesn't know where you are but that she isn't concerned.' "

Tapper's written response yesterday: "Busted. In retrospect, the story I was referring to wasn't slimy enough -- at that moment the only ones who knew of the governor's affair were Sanford, his wife, his mistress, and the State newspaper." On Twitter, he said he "was clumsily trying to sow doubts about a competitor." ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said Tapper "was carrying water for some producers in New York who knew he had a longstanding relationship with the governor's office."

Tapper phoned Jim Bell, executive producer of "Today," to apologize, and tweeted an apology to Gregory, who said he accepted.

Bell called Tapper "a standup guy" but said it is unfortunate that some journalists "go to these lengths where the only way they can book a story is to trash the competition instead of trying to extol their own virtues." Bell said he could not be certain that no NBC staffer had ever bad-mouthed a rival -- "Everyone knows there are sharp elbows in the booking fray" -- but that Tapper's e-mail was "a little over the top."

One denigrating message struck closer to home. Brendan Miniter, an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal's online editorial page, ridiculed his own paper's news coverage during Sanford's disappearance. "Someone at WSJ should be fired for today's story. Ridiculous," he e-mailed Sawyer.

The Journal news story began: "After sparking a four-day mystery about his whereabouts, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's spokesman said the governor had been hiking along the Appalachian Trail."

The Journal and Fox News declined to comment. In a followup e-mail, Fox's Jenkins told Sawyer that "I work mostly for our primetime coverage -- Oreilly, Hannity, Greta, Beck -- so there would likely be primetime coverage as well for some soundbites of the Gov dispelling this flap."

Partisans also offered their services. Erick Erickson, editor in chief of the conservative blog Red State, wrote Sawyer after posting that the "pestering media" had ginned up the disappearance tale.

"If he wants something more personal for the blog to push back, I'm happy to help . . . Obviously he's got more than just the usual suspects trying to make hay out of this and we're big fans," Erickson wrote.

After Sanford acknowledged the extramarital romance, Erickson filed an update: "Well, what I wrote yesterday was wrong. Sanford's lies spread through his office and out to the rest of us."