Casey Anthony: More Questions, Few Answers

By SteveK 

Earlier today TVNewser got a tip that a news organization had posted the $500,000 bond to get Casey Anthony out of jail.

Todd Black, EVP of Press Corps Media, who is handling press requests for Anthony’s lawyer Jose Baez, reiterated to TVNewser that the bond was posted by a single anonymous donor. He said it is, “absolutely a bald-faced lie if anybody is saying,” a network paid for the bond. “That party wants to remain anonymous,” said Black.

TVNewser reached out to the broadcast and cable networks today and all denied posting the bond.

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Still, much of the focus turned to ABC News. The network aired exclusive home video footage of the Anthony family on GMA Friday morning and on 20/20 Friday night. The Orlando Sentinel’s Hal Boedecker was first to report, “ABC News did not pay for interviews or the home video…but ABC News told me that it did license the home videos and photographs.”

An ABC News insider tells TVNewser the network paid $200,000 to license “several hours worth of home videos.” The insider also says NBC was involved in a bidding war for the footage. A second source inside ABC tells TVNewser all three broadcast networks bid on the material which was eventually licensed to ABC.

An NBC News spokesperson disputes the claim, saying, “NBC did not make any bid to license the footage.”

A CBS News spokesperson tells TVNewser, “We did not bid for the video.”

But even if the figure was $200,000, still far short of the bond amount, Black is adamant the Anthony family did not receive any money. “If any news organization wants to pay for items of that nature, it has nothing to do with him,” he says of Baez. “People have been making money out there selling items and making deals.”

An ABC News spokesperson would only tell TVNewser the network licensed the footage from “rights holders,” and did not specify if they went through the family or the family’s attorneys.

This whole idea of a TV network posting Casey Anthony’s bond was first brought up Friday night on The O’Reilly Factor, with Geraldo Rivera telling Bill O’Reilly, “Not ours, but it could be a network.” O’Reilly responded, “If that’s true, we’re going to have a field day.”

Another network TV insider tells us Baez attempted to “sell an interview” with Casey Anthony last week. We’re told he’d been asking $500,000. Todd Black, the publicist, says Casey Anthony, now free from jail for five days, does not have any interviews at the “immediate time.”

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