00:00Bill Cosby's release from prison offers a moral dilemma for TV news networks, should they interview him.
00:05A former booker for a national morning news show says that Cosby is almost certainly being pursued for an interview by multiple networks.
00:12However, a recent example shows how this could be tricky for them.
00:15When CBS News interviewed Woody Allen tied to the release of his memoir,
00:19they shelved it for some eight months due to the controversy that has swirled around the filmmaker.
00:23The network then repurposed the sit-down for Paramount Plus by pairing it with a 2018 interview with his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow.
00:30Who has alleged that Allen abused her.
00:32End with a new segment from correspondent Erin Moriarty, in which she quote,
00:35explores the challenges the public faces when respected artists are alleged or discovered to have acted in a morally questionable manner.
00:43The segment even referenced Cosby.
00:45I mean, let me be honest. I'd watch the Cosby show if they put it back on.
00:49I mean, because that's an ensemble cast.
00:53And you don't want to group punish people because of one person's bad acts.
00:57For news networks considering an interview with Cosby, if he just repeats his denials and shows no remorse or regret, is it worth it?
01:04Or would they simply be laundering his dismissals?
01:07The question for news organizations is whether an interview is worth the inevitable backlash
01:10and whether it may need to be packaged with other context, similar to how CBS handled the Allen interview.
01:16If someone is there being interviewed, they're given a kind of legitimacy just by the fact that they're being interviewed on a big newscast.
01:25As Cosby considers a public comeback, it's a concern news outlets likely won't take lightly.
01:30For more on this story, go to THR.com.
01:32For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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