NBC is in damage control regarding its handling of an 11-year-old recording of on-air personality Billy Bush and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talking in crude and misogynistic terms about women, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Bush’s exit is being negotiated as a result of an NBC News review into the matter that determined he should have been more forthcoming about the existence of the recording, according to executives familiar with the situation. There are still unanswered questions regarding how long “Access Hollywood” may have been sitting on the tape, its path to the airwaves and who leaked it to the Washington Post last week before NBC could get its own story out.
Since then, though, it has emerged that Bush himself shared knowledge of the recording with colleagues last August while he was covering Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and there was debate about how to proceed, according to the people close to “Access Hollywood” and Bush. “Access Hollywood” executive producer Rob Silverstein is a personal friend with Bush and was sensitive to the potential blowback the story could have, a person close to him said.
NBC News and NBC executives insist they were unaware of the existence of the recording until last week. The stance that no one outside “Access Hollywood” knew of the tape is disputed by people close to Messrs. Silverstein and Bush, who feel their show and staff are being “thrown under the bus” to protect the news unit.
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