User:Ebony Hough-Granville

How Did Social Media Contribute To Gayle King's interview with Former NBA Star Lisa Leslie Written by Ebony Hough-Granville Social media networks have a tendency of either giving too much or too little information to their viewers and the information provided is not always accurate. Recently there was a short clip released of Gayle King “CBS This Morning” Co-anchor, and also known as Oprah Winfrey’s ‘Bff’ conducting an interview with former WNBA star Lisa Leslie. In this interview, Gayle asked Lisa about Kobe Bryant’s alleged sexual assault case in 2003(CNN, 2020), just days after Kobe Bryant’s untimely death. Leslie responds by saying that the media should be more respectful, she states that if anyone had questions they had years to ask Kobe while he was still alive. Lisa also feels that Kobe’s past allegations shouldn't be held over his legacy, and quite a few seem to agree with her. Kobe Bryant Plane Crash, 9 Dies. Gayle received tremendous backlash and even death threats after the interview. Social networks were booming with outrage over what some may call an insensible question. celebrities such as rapper Snoop Dogg took to social media and slammed Gayle even calling her out of her name for bringing Kobe’s case to the forefront after he was deceased. Snoop later apologizes for calling her out of her name but still stands strong on what he believes, that Gayle was out of line (Pagesix.com, 2020). Rapper 50 cents also responded, during his interview on the Ebro Morning Show,50 cent states, "You had a criminal situation that went away, right?" which was dropped in 2004. "And 10 years to talk about it—nobody talked about it. The man passes away, and you want to talk about that while ``The family is grieving”, I just didn't think that was cool (Complex, 2020).

Now King is responding to critics saying she's "mortified" that moment was taken "out of context" (CNN, 2020). She faults CBS for its edited clip of the conversation. Gayle says CBS released only a small portion of her interview with Leslie without providing the full context (NBC News, 2020). In Kings Twitter Video Response she states, "I know that if I had only seen the clip that you saw, I would be extremely angry with me too. I am mortified. I'm embarrassed and I am very angry," she said. "Unbeknownst to me, my network put up a clip from a very wide-ranging interview, totally taken out of context and when you see it that way, it's very jarring."(NBC News, 2020). Gayle shares that the Full Interview With Leslie shows a wide range of conversation and questions, not only Kobe's 2003 case. This specific situation shows how the digital world put out little information regarding the Gayle King and Lisa Leslie’s interview and gave people the opportunity to attack King over a short piece of the interview. Should the 2003 criminal case against the late Kobe Bryant have been mentioned? In my opinion no! but given the circumstances at the time, the entire interview should have been released. In conclusion, with the power of social media in today’s society, the influence one person can attain has never been bigger. That also works in reverse because those who influence us are innumerable. Often times social media only provides a glimpse of the entire story. With so many people providing their own unique or common perspective and opinions it’s up to us as individuals to dig deeper for the truth.

CNN. (2020). Gayle King says clip of interview about Kobe Bryant was 'out of context' - CNN Video. [online]

Pagesix.com. (2020). Snoop Dogg: My mother slammed me for Gayle King, Kobe Bryant rant. [online]

Complex. (2020). 50 Cent Addresses Gayle King's Controversial Kobe Comments. [online]

NBC News. (2020). Gayle King responds to backlash over Kobe Bryant sexual assault question. [online]

Twitter.com. (2020). Gayle King (@GayleKing) on Twitter. [online]