Thursday August 10, 2000; 10:05 AM EDT

Internet, Radio Outrage Over Bush Threat Forced
CBS to Come Clean

While the mainstream press ignored news that the CBS television
network had allowed an apparent threat to the life of
presidential candidate George W. Bush to go out over its
airwaves, the story percolated on the Internet and talk radio
for days.

But despite the establishment press blackout, the network was
deluged with protests as rumors swirled about how its “LATE,
LATE SHOW with Craig Kilborn” had televised a video of the Texas
governor addressing the GOP convention last week — with the
words “Snipers Wanted” superimposed over the image.

Though CBS stayed mum, on Web sites like FreeRepublic.com the
actual video of the Kilborn Show stunt has been available since
Monday. And at least one radio talk show host, WABC-NY’s Steve
Malzberg, was steamed enough to take matters into his own hands.

For days Malzberg had been calling the Secret Service, trying to
find out if they’d launched an investigation. “This is
outrageous,” he told NewsMax.com Wednesday night. “If I had
pulled a stunt like this on the air, I’d be fired in a
heartbeat.”

Wednesday the popular conservative host finally got some answers
from Secret Service officials, who told him that “an
investigation is ongoing.”

Later that night Malzberg speculated on his show that CBS would
probably blame the Kilborn Show threat on a low level staffer.
“They’ll probably fire some intern and that will be that. But
it’s Kilborn’s show. You can’t tell me he didn’t know what was
going on.”

CBS finally responded to NewsMax.com’s queries about the
incident late Wednesday, with a prepared statement announcing
that the network “deeply regretted” the episode. Missing was an
explicit apology — or even a description of the offending
graphic.

Curiously, CBS’s press release was dated August 8th, a day
before the network actually made it available to the media.

Apparently network honchos were sitting on their “regrets,”
acknowledging the Bush threat only when pressure from the
Internet and talk radio forced the issue.