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ABC News, Stung by Casey Anthony Fiasco, Says It’s Getting Out of the Business of Making Deals With Interview Subjects

Jul 26, 2011  •  Post A Comment

After receiving a public relations black eye by paying Casey Anthony $200,000 for photos in 2008, ABC News has decided to get out of the business of paying news subjects involved in exclusive interviews, reports Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast.

ABC News will end the practice of buying photos or videos as a way of getting cooperation from news subjects, the story says.

"These licensing deals had become a crutch, and an unnecessary one," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider.

While the network stopped short of placing an absolute ban on the deals, it would take what the article calls "an extraordinary circumstance" to get approval for a licensing fee.

ABC’s $200,000 payment to Anthony surfaced last year during a court proceeding, the piece notes.

5 Comments

  1. They NEVER should have been IN the business of “licensing” photos and videos! I think the state of affairs at ABC News – and actually most journalism – is abismal. Good Morning America actually spent about as much time this AM on a bear mauling as they did the debt crisis!
    Whatever happened to journalists presenting a story that just plain answers Who/What/When/Where/Why without having a bias or an “opinion”? It’s all very sad.

  2. I am so pleased to see ABC make this decision. I am one of the people who will follow which company/network/newspaper deals with Casey to make sure there is NO profit involved. Also, Casey is a pathological liar and wouldn’t know the truth if it bite her in the rear. Would not believe anything she says anyway.

  3. No matter what ABC does now, the fact remains that they just about paid for her to get away with murder. Nice move – and for WHAT, exactly? Pictures that accomplished absolutely nothing but “bragging” rights? Our major networks don’t have journalists anymore, they’ve got overpaid tabloid hosts.

  4. Profits and opinions should not be part of news. News reports should be completely neutral and direct. I don’t even want news readers to have any kind of inflection in their voices when they read the news. Inflections that show amazement, horror, sadness or outrage is opinion, and not part of fair and honest reporting.

  5. So we agree, Fox “News” is the opposite of journalism.

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