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Gov. David Paterson's Aide Writes Angry Letter to New York Times

By Heather Grossmann | February 10, 2010 8:35am | Updated on February 10, 2010 8:24am
Gov. David Paterson
Gov. David Paterson
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AP Photo/Mike Groll

By Heather Grossmann

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — Gov. David Paterson’s top aide penned an irate letter to the New York Times on the governor’s behalf Tuesday, slamming the paper for letting rumors of a “salacious” scoop about Paterson run rampant while neither denying them nor backing them up.

Paterson and his aide, Lawrence Schwartz, who wrote the letter to the Times’ public editor, said the “media circus” was over a profile story the paper was doing on the governor that contained none of the “dark things being whispered.”

“At any point, the Times' editors could have easily issued a public statement clarifying that the profile neither contained nor supported the salacious stories being sourced to it,” Schwartz wrote, saying that this would not have compromised the paper’s reporting.

“A public clarification would, however, have spared the public the misleading spectacle of the last week," he wrote. "Common decency, if not journalistic ethics, demanded as much.”

Rumors have swirled since the weekend that the story would pry into Paterson's personal life and reveal damaging information.  So damaging, in fact, that some predicted it would force the governor to step down. 

Instead, he has said the only way he will leave office is either through the ballot box, or "in a box."

The Times’ ran a short piece early Tuesday evening reporting on the “self-feeding, self-referential frenzy” the story had raised, but did not directly confirm of deny anything about it.

Schwartz’s letter ended with a request that the Times’ public editor look into the paper’s actions and decisions in regards to the Paterson story, but said, “Unfortunately, it is not in your power nor the New York Times' to undo the damage that has been already been done in this case."