Another reporter who checked in with Anderson before going on TV was them-Time magazine deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius, who now edits the Harvard Business Review. Oddly, Ignatius — who had covered and profiled Spitzer for Time — was booked on ABC News and NBC News as a supporter of Spitzer's, to balance out the detractors offering gleeful quotes on his self-immolation.

On March 10, a few hours after the story broke, Ignatius e-mailed Spitzer's chief of staff Marlene Turner asking if he could speak to Spitzer or anyone else in his office about the governor's state of mind before going on ABC News's World News Tonight. Turner referred him to Anderson. World News didn't use any of Ignatius' tape, but the next day, NBC Nightly News invited him to speak as "someone who knows and likes Eliot," and he asked Anderson for access to Spitzer or anybody else who might know his thinking. Anderson responded that she'd be happy to talk to him.

That night, Ignatius was identified on a Nightly News segment as a Spitzer "supporter," and he told correspondent Mike Taibbi that "it's going to be very, very, very difficult for him to stay in office."

Ignatius and Masters were right to find out as much as they could before being presented to television audiences as informed analysts (or in Ignatius' case, a partisan). But it's interesting, to us at least, to see laid bare the role that flacks can play behind the scenes in managing the tone and direction of talking-head coverage during a PR disaster.