Oprah Winfrey tearfully defended her best friend Gayle King after she receieved backlash for her Kobe Bryant interview questions for The Morning Show. King came under fire last week for her CBS This Morning interview with WNBA phenom Lisa Leslie, in which the women discussed accusations that Bryant had raped a hotel employee during an extramarital encounter back in 2003.
Winfrey appeared on Today with Hoda & Jenna to discuss the fallout from King's interview with Lisa Leslie. Leslie, who was also a close friend of Bryant's, noted that his past wasn't a complicated issue for her at all. She answered all of King's questions without incident. It was what happened next that is causing an uproar. CBS, the network that employs King, teased the interview by extracting a controversial snippet in which the veteran journalist grills Leslie about Bryant's legal troubles. King took to social media to issue an apology to the public, while claiming that she was embarrassed and deeply pained by the way the interview was previewed. King also defended herself as a journalist, making it clear that her questions about Bryant's complex legacy were part of a much larger conversation pertaining to his career and tragic death. The backlash against King was swift, with several outlets reporting that Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent allegedly made threats against her for speaking out against Bryant. Snoop Dogg has since denied that his comments crossed the line. Even convicted felon Bill Cosby tweeted about the interview controversy from his prison cell.
Oprah Winfrey, who has been friends with King for more than 40 years, held back tears as she spoke about the backlash on Today with Hoda & Jenna (via Yahoo). She also commented on her friend's current emotional state:
"I think you stand in the gap, you try to be there for your friends, but this is very hard because when you have...the force of social media and particularly people who didn’t see either interview, making attacks - and I think everybody has the right to have their opinion - but to do it with vitriol is hate and meanness."
Winfrey and King have often spoken about their close relationship with each other. With this latest controversy, Winfrey blames "somebody at the network" for posting the interview clip out of context to make it look like King was "just trying to press to get an answer from Lisa Leslie." Winfrey noted that King hasn't slept in days and even condemned the criticism against her as "misogynist vitriol." Kobe Bryant and eight others - including his daughter Gianna - were killed when their helicopter crashed into a mountain in Calabasas on January 26. Bryant and his daughter's memorial service will take place February 24 in Los Angeles. That date was chosen to honor father and daughter's respective basketball jersey numbers.
While during the CBS This Morning interview, Gayle King was more than within her right to do her job by asking the tough questions about Bryant's past, it was in poor taste to do so before the man is even buried. His friends, family, and fans are still grieving him, and no byline is worth sacrificing one's integrity. Bryant tried and, to many, succeeded at reinventing himself as a champion of women, a doting dad, loving husband, and pillar of the black community.
Source: Yahoo
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