Andrea Gusty who appears in this photo, still works for KTVA. I sent her emails on 5/25 at 4:50pm and on 5/29 at 1:08pm. I also phoned and left voice mail messages on 5/26 at 2:30pm and 6/2 at 11:22am. She did not respond to any of my messages.
Mr. McAllister returned my email promptly. My intent was clear: to hear the people involved describe the event because I was open to the idea there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the photos.
I said I had some questions of my own, beyond any Internet noise, about what I see in them. But I really wanted to hear what Mr. McAllister had to say about the moments surrounding the pictures.
We corresponded four times. Each time, I tried to reassure Mr. McAllister that I would send him a Word.doc with my questions. He would type in his answers and upload the doc to me. I would then add more questions as they arose. He would see the final copy before I would publish it to my site.
This is unheard of in the world of journalism. I was bending over backwards to be fair and tried to reassure him that he could tell his story in this document.
In each email, Bill McAllister expressed multiple feelings on the matter, and the people involved, though our correspondence is off-the-record and I cannot divulge more.
The last time, I offered to take his final email and use it, in place of an interview, as a self-contained statement. I would copy and paste it exactly as he wrote it.
The stipulations he returned to me were unacceptable.
I look forward then, to publishing my subsequent conversation with Brad Scharlott.