It is possible the meeting didn't take place; no sources were given for the info IIRC; the reporters were some distant from Chicago.
It is possible the meeting did take place; no sources again, but then somebody high up got them to spike them.
On the basis of your information; Fitz could subpoena the reporters, would that be another Times' fiasco where the woman went to jail rather than reveal her source?
Otherwise, nobody is going to admit to anything, and the whole thing will blow over or become another wingnut conspiracy.
Still it wouldn't have been reported for no reason. Usually they issue an errata or retraction. So it's weird.
I've got the screen shots of the CT Tristates and Quincy.
What's wandtv 17? I've got a 3-part screen capture of that. Headline was "Blagojevich to meet with Obama, other governors about budget concerns." Posted Nov 30, 08; 12:00 PM CST, saved on December 10; 9:31 PM. Can't read it w/o opening it in PS. That one they were going to meet "Monday" and "Tuesday" in Philadelphia, so if it took place, it should have been fairly high profile, probably didn't happen in light of the charges, don't have the chronology of all this in my head.
“Still it wouldn’t have been reported for no reason. Usually they issue an errata or retraction.”
This KHQA story IS the retraction. It’s certainly possible the station is hiding something, but you really have to ask why NO other media stories reported this alleged meeting. I think what happened is that either the reporter got it wrong on the first story—e.g., inferring a meeting was planned when in fact that wasn’t the case—or perhaps the prediction was correct, but plans got changed by Obama or Blago. If the latter occurred, they were under no obligation to try and hunt down every press account that predicted a meeting, so KHQA was never aware the predicted meeting didn’t take place. Trust me, the struggling MSM don’t have time to have “fact-checkers” to double-check that every predicted future event announced in the papers actually comes off as predicted.
Thus, the second story—which also was from KHQA—was obviously a reporter in a hurry who checked the KHQA archives (or perhaps just remembered the prediction) and used it as “supporting evidence” for the storyline being told on December 8. A conscientious reporter never would rely on a prediction of a meeting as prove it had happened, but the information that the meeting had happened was just “filler:” it wasn’t the central part of the 12/8 story, so the reporter never bothered to confirm from the campaign or other media sources that this meeting had indeed happened.
Thus, one can believe in a conspiracy to cover up a meeting or one can accept a more plausible explanation: reporters are human, hence sometimes sloppy in how they execute their assignments. In broadcast media especially, I think it’s fair to say that deadlines are probably tighter than in print media. Thus, caution is in order when confronted with an apparent contradiction of this sort. As I say, this would be far harder to explain away had multiple sources posted similar contradictory accounts.