A spokesman for ABC News has now talked to Raw Story about dropping the ball on the Sen. David Vitter story. As Deborah Jeane Palfrey told Big Head DC last month, ABC was analyzing a portion of records that ranged from from 2002 to 2006.

“As you know, Ms. Palfrey had records going back more than 10 years, and we did not have all of the records, but we did very meticulous reporting on the records we did have.” the spokesman told Raw Story when questioned why the news organization did not get the Vitter scoop. “There are obviously six other years of records that were just released, and the Senator’s number must have been on one of those years we didn’t have.”

However, ABC News knew that a release the full records was likely in the courts very soon (in fact, it happened only two months and one day after their original flawed report aired on 20/20), so why didn’t they wait to report the full story? Was having a weak sweeps month story better than actually waiting until they had a solidly and fully reported story?