On-Air Giffords Interview Not a Done Deal
ABC admits "the congresswoman’s exact participation can only be known as we move forward."
| Posted Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011, at 9:54 AM
UPDATE No. 2: Here's the explanation from ABC News, via a network official:
"Both Rep. Giffords and Mr. Kelly will be participating in the special, but given the nature of her injuries and recovery the congresswoman’s exact participation can only be known as we move forward. The special will fully document Giffords’ remarkable road to recovery with her husband by her side and will include dozens of hours of video tape that document that journey."
UPDATE No. 1 Monday at 5:03 p.m. It looks like ABC News may have gotten ahead of itself.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has not decided for certain that she will sit down with Diane Sawyer in the coming weeks to record an on-camera interview, the recovering congresswoman's spokesman told an Arizona news outlet Monday afternoon.
"Congresswoman Giffords has not decided if she's going to conduct an on-camera interview," spokesman Mark Kimble told the Tucson Sentinel, adding that the current plan is for Sawyer to interview Mark Kelly on camera and then "sit down and talk with Mark and Gabby" off camera.
Giffords will make a final decision on whether she will agree for the interview to be recorded at some point in the future, "based on her progress," Kimble said. The original Sentinel story deemed the on-camera interview "unlikely" in its headline, but the news outlet says that it has since updated that to "undecided" after Kimble complained.
We've got a request for clarification in with ABC News, and will update if/when they respond.
POST Monday at 1:20 p.m.: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will sit down in the coming weeks with ABC News for her first public interview since she was shot in the head this past January.
The interview, with news anchor Diane Sawyer, is all but certain to set off the latest round of speculation about the recovering congresswoman’s career plans ahead of the 2012 elections. It will also likely provide the best look to date at Giffords’s progress as she continues to recover from the near-fatal attack roughly nine months ago.
The sit-down will air Monday, Nov. 14, at 10 p.m. as part of a larger look at Giffords’s recovery, her relationship with soon-to-be-retired astronaut Mark Kelly, and the pair’s "extraordinary careers in public service," the network announced Monday.
While Giffords has not yet been interviewed on camera since her shooting, Kelly has been. In fact, as the New York Times notes, his first one was also granted to Sawyer.
The November special is being released in conjunction with the publication of a memoir by Giffords and Kelly, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, which is set for release the following day.
Giffords was last seen on television last month when she made a surprise appearance on the House floor, where she cast her first vote (in favor of raising the debt ceiling) since the shooting.
