Friday, September 26, 2008

CBS News Ticked Off at Letterman

From the New York Post:

CBS News executives were red- faced yesterday trying to explain how David Letterman used unaired news footage of Sen. John McCain with Katie Couric to embarrass the Republican presidential candidate.

McCain canceled his appearance on Letterman's show late Wednesday, several hours before he was due to appear - claiming he had to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis.

But when Letterman discovered the Senator sitting down with Couric at the same time he was supposed to be taping "Late Night," he unloaded on McCain.

...Later in the show, Letterman showed an internal, live video of McCain being tended to by a make-up artist before the Couric interview. Both Couric and Letterman are on CBS.

...Asked if CBS officials had a problem with Letterman using the internal news feed, a spokeswoman for "The Evening News" refused to address the issue.

But several CBS News executives - who asked not to be identified - said that the stunt did not go down well within the news division.

"If we had done something like that to him, someone around here would end up getting fired," one said.

News officials found out Letterman was using the internal feed shortly after it showed up on an internal CBS feed carrying the "Late Show" taping.

"They were pretty aggravated," a CBS News source told The Post.

"But they were not about to start a fight with Letterman," the source said. "We're in the middle of a heavy, heavy news cycle and Letterman is Letterman.

"He does whatever he wants and always has."

Interesting.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

ALASKA!

Anonymous said...

on the Interesting Scale, this "story" barely beats out this one:

A Cat Just Walked By My Window

film at 11.

Brian said...

not surprising.

August Danowski said...

I think it is very interesting - McCain says he can't do Letterman because he has to rush back to Washington to save the day, but then goes to do an interview with Couric (what happened to the whole 'suspending the campaign' thing). So, basically, he lied to Letterman when he could have just said, 'Hey, I'm doing a different interview instead.' I suppose it doesn't matter because we all know it's okay to lie, so long as you aren't under oath (at least, if you are a Republican).