Opinion: The NY Times on Costas/Aruba…
As Drudge leaked yesterday, The New York Times’ Bill Carter has an article out today. Though Drudge chose to focus on the part of the article that covered Klein taking shots at FOX News Channel, the article is more about Bob Costas’ refusal to do a Larry King Live show on Aruba…
“I don’t believe there was a single American who was sitting around saying ‘I’d really like to see Bob Costas’s take on this,’ ” Mr. Costas said in telephone interview.
…
Mr. Costas said he had found out “about two days before” the show that the topic would be Ms. Holloway, who disappeared on May 30. He told the producers that he hoped the topic would change. On Wednesday, when he learned that it would not, he declined to serve as host. The program went on with Chris Pixley as the host.
What strikes me as very odd is Klein’s comments taken in context with this article’s theme…vis a vis…Klein complaining about how “brainless” it is to program about Aruba in an article where someone doing a CNN show backs out of it because it’s about…well…Aruba. The article does sort of address this issue…
Fox News executives accused Mr. Klein of hypocrisy, saying the Holloway case had indeed been covered by CNN. They mentioned Nancy Grace, the prime-time host on CNN’s affiliated network, Headline News, who has done almost as many hours on Ms. Holloway as Ms. Van Susteren has. Mr. Klein said he did not supervise that program.
Nor, apparently, does Mr. Klein directly influence the content of Mr. King’s program, which has also frequently dived into the Holloway case. Mr. Klein said that Mr. King’s producers have wide autonomy.
Who’s in charge of CNN? Jonathan Klein or Larry King Live’s producers? Is nothing out of bounds for the Larry King Live show? If Klein really wanted the story spiked until there was actual news one would think he’d send out a memo and that would be the end of it. Klein does offer up a defense on this…
“Larry is sui generis,” Mr. Klein said. “Larry does what Larry does. He has earned the right to pick his own topics.”
That may be true, although one wonders how that applies in this case since King wasn’t even on the show that week.
Well Larry gets his chance tonight on LKL as he covers Holloway and other “missing people”. As for Klein, NYT article only points out what all at CNN are asking, “what exactly is Klein in charge of and why”. (other than shooting his mouth off)
Comment by anonymous — August 24, 2005 @ 4:21 pm
Klein also mentioned that an anchor shouldn’t have to cover a story that they don’t want to. If that was the case, none of CNN’s anchors would show up for work. The statement he made obviously applies to Costas only. BTW, Chris Pixley can fill in for Larry anytime, much easier on the eyes.
Comment by anonymous — August 24, 2005 @ 4:54 pm