"Mayor Tim Burchett have served the Knoxville News Sentinel with papers demanding that the KNS explain how they gained access to the campaign's online bank records."

I'd like to know the answer to that too.

We are also told that KNS Editor Jack McElroy pitched a fit, and recorded it.

I didn't quite grasp this, Randy? Jack recorded what, the "fit?"

Where, how, to what end???

I suspect the KNS will refuse to reveal their source(s).

And I'm not sure this is the smartest move Burchett can make. I'm one of the folks not convinced of any deliberate wrong-doing. He can put this matter to rest in my mind my simply filing an amended statement that explains the unexplained expenditures.

I'm totally uninterested in watching him do battle with the KNS.

As in quite literally "attacking the messenger?" And recording the attack, too?

Sounds like a misdirected response and a petty one, both, since KNS should have counsel on staff (or retainer) who is better qualified and specifically authorized to respond not to that messenger, but to his boss?!

Well, I do hope that aspect of the report you got is in error...

Thanks for the clarification, though.

Video recording the meltdown is odd. It sounds like news. Will the Sentinel report it or not? If they don't report it, what does that say about this mire they've gotten stuck in? Will McElroy answer questions from WATE? He has now inserted himself into the story. Protecting a source is one thing. But how can the Sentinel not answer Burchett's questions? Does a paper have a legal right to post bank account information regardless of how that got the information? Redacted info or not, isn't this a violation of privacy?

Will McElroy answer questions from WATE?

Now there's an interesting question.

If the KNS feels the whole story is newsworthy, then surely this part of it is as well.

With Harmon's action, will the source not eventually be revealed in spite of the current KNS position?

Not sure what sign-in sheets and video surveillance would reveal about email received.
~m.

A person who posts here tried to send me a private message through knoxnews, but it could not be delivered. Please just send an email to barkers@knoxnews.com. Thanks, and pardon the interruption.

Burchett sought KNS video. McElroy did not video the encounter with the process server.

Randy, I think Jamie's saying that the "video" reference in the original message you received related only to what it was this process server was seeking (on behalf of Burchett), not how it was McElroy responded to the process server.

The only "video" in this incident is the "video" Burchett wants of visitors to KNS's front lobby?

This whole discussion is turning hilarious, on both threads...

Yes, that is exactly what I said. Whomever told you McElroy videoed the process server in action was wrong.

Whoever.

That "whomever" versus "whoever" stuff just skeers me, FC :-)

I'm going to ignore that because she's such a lovely person...

Biggest, juiciest softball that's been thrown my way in a long time. : >)

It didn't really occur to me until I saw someone suggest it at the KNS site, but...

It may be that we should not perceive Burchett's serving this subpeona on KNS as an indicator of how he plans to address his constituents' questions about his campaign finances.

It may be that we should instead perceive the action as just a step he needs to take WRT points important for him to document as part of his divorce proceeding?

After all, we are aware that someone--if not his estranged wife, then someone wanting us to think s/he is his estranged wife--is acting quite aggressively in cyberspace to disparage and attack him at every turn? I refer to the bitter blog posts, tweets, and private messages sent to strangers at the KNS site, some or all of which we have every one witnessed?

If the person doing these things really is his estranged wife, very possibly his reasons for obtaining this subpeona have less to do with any pending investigation of his campaign records and more to do with his imminent final divorce decree?

Since reading the suggestion, I've become almost sure of it...

I'd go w/ whoever, but that's because I've never been comfortable w/ anyform of whom. ;-)

Yeah, it's like Fats Waller used to say: One never knows, do one?

I shouldn't have been so slow to conclude it, Betty.

I am someone who got one of those bizarre private messages disparaging him just last weekend, from a poster I didn't know who wrote me as "SilentPartnerNoMore."

I would say that's got to be a little embarrassing, but it probably isn't.

Like most everybody else, I'm certainly an outsider to their divorce proceedings. I have no idea whether there's any "meat" to her (?) unrelenting disparagement of him.

Her "methods," though, strike me as so despicable that my immediate emotional response has been to bristle in his defense.

I really think her behavior reflects more poorly on her than on him, but I can’t fault him for trying any way he can to put a stop to it.

Today's news about funding the Burchetts' joint account with campaign funds doesn't look good for Tim.