CBS’s Public Eye editor, Matthew Felling, wants to know what’s going on at MTP: “You think ‘Meet the Press’ and you think stalwart Inside the Beltway folks. Broder. Novak. Dowd. You don’t think (last Sunday’s guest) Bill Cosby.” Or the program’s next upcoming guest, Stephen Colbert. “What gives?” Felling asks.
“I spoke with NBC News spokeswoman Barbara Levin,” he continues, “who informed me not to look too deeply into this coincidence, saying, ‘These two appearances entirely had to do with (the guests’ book) publication schedules.'”
While true, Felling concedes, he’s none too happy. “These back-to-back interviews are another accidental example of how about ten or twenty years ago, when there would be an occasional hard news interview with an entertainment figure we’d chalk that up to the news industry coloring outside the lines. But now, there are no lines at all.”