USA Today’s Lorrie Lynch was surprised to return home “from a three-hour church meeting” the other night to discover she’d been named Keith Olbermann‘s ‘Worse Person in the World.’ The MSNBC anchor named her so because of what Lynch wrote in USA Weekend about Olbermann’s cross-network colleague Erin Burnett. We told you all about that on Monday. Lynch follows up with:
Keith was upset that I told readers how Burnett would not talk to us without her PR handler being in on the interview. In his rant Keith chastizes me for not understanding that no public figure from “the president to Ashton Kutcher” is interviewed without his press handler sitting in.
Sorry Keith, I beg to differ. I’m proud to say we expect public figures to be able to answer questions without their PR people in the room or on the phone. It makes for much better interviews. And my column is full of such conversations every week. In fact, in November of 2005, Keith himself was featured in the column, having given a lovely interview that was completely handler-free.
Hey, it could have been worse, Lynch could have been the worst person in the world. Snap. Maybe now she will.