HOLLYWOOD - George Clooney scrapped an appearance on news show Dateline last weekafter he was told a planned discussion about the news media on
the program was being replaced by a fluffy interview with Eva Longoria.
Clooney was approached to join a panel discussing the fact that entertainment
news has become more important in America than current affairs to promote his
new movie Good Night, and Good Luck, which focuses on the heroes of 1950s news
shows.
He found it ironic that the discussion idea was scrapped when Desperate
Housewives star Longoria became available-- and he then slammed plans to turn
his appearance on the NBC show into nothing more than a promotional piece for
his new film.
He says, "They pitched me an earnest discussion about the difficulties of
entertainment pushing news off the air... I thought, 'That's an interesting
thing.'
"Then, we got a call and the producer cancelled this for an Eva Longoria
piece, which is fine. I wanted to point out that it seemed awfully interesting
because we were doing a film about the dangers of entertainment constantly
pushing off news (sic) and then we were pushed off for entertainment!
"I fired off a letter which said, 'Listen, if you told me you were pulling
the plug on our show because we were an entertainment story and you had a news
piece that you wanted instead, I would applaud your stance, but you didn't.'"
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