“Something Of A Snake”

Following up on yesterday’s post about Charles Gibson‘s Africa comment: The WNT anchor appeared on a Chicago radio show Wednesday and said the reporter, Joe Hagan of New York, took his words out of context.

“This guy, who I will never talk to again from New York magazine who is something of a snake, he took my quote and I think perverted the meaning of it to indicate in some way that I was insensitive to news from one of the five major continents in the world,” Gibson said.

In an e-mail to TVNewser, Keith Olbermann says “Charlie Gibson nailed it — Joe Hagan is indeed ‘something of a snake.'” He writes: “My own experience with him while he was still with The New York Observer was one of the classic bait-and-switch, wherein the interviewer poses as sympathetic, wastes two hours of the interviewee’s time, spends the interviewee’s company’s money, tries to flirt with the interviewee’s company’s publicity person, then writes what the hell he pleases — and pulls quotes out of context to boot. It is a great short-term strategy, but tends to fall to the ground when enough people say they’ll never talk to you again — a stand I’m honored to share with Mr. Gibson.”