A local NBC affiliate in Maine reported last night that the network had requested an interview with Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) after she spoke at a rally in Bangor yesterday. However, the station declined when Palin’s handlers said they would grant the interview only if the McCain campaign could choose the reporter:
[We] also requested a one-on-one interview with Sarah Palin but the McCain-Palin campaign wanted to choose the reporter who would do the interview. That was a condition we could not agree to so we declined the inverview opportunity.
Indeed, the McCain campaign’s stunt is eerily similar to way President Bush has handled interviews with the media. When the White House offered NPR an interview with Bush last year, there was a catch — Juan Williams had to conduct the interview. “The end result,” the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin noted, was that “Williams did the interview for his other employer — Fox News.”