Gayle King Defends Herself, Calls Out CBS Over Her Kobe Bryant Sexual Assault Interview

CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King has received a ton of backlash over her interview with the WNBA’s Lisa Leslie about Kobe Bryant after they touched upon his sexual assault charges from over a decade ago.

After some back-and-forth, the CBS clip shows Lisa saying to Gayle, “I think the media should be more respectful at this time. It’s like if you had questions about it, you’ve had many years to ask him that. I don’t think it’s something that we should keep hanging out his legacy.”

Well, Gayle took to Instagram this morning to defend herself, saying, “I know that if I had only seen the clip that you saw, I’d be extremely angry with me too.”

“I am mortified. I am embarrassed and I am very angry,” she added.

“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. It’s jarring to me. I didn’t even know anything about it,” Gayle continued.

“We talked about that court case because that court case has also come up. And, I wanted to get Lisa’s take on it as a friend who knew him well, what she thought, where that should stand,” she added. “It was very powerful when she looked me in the eye, as a member of the media, to say, ‘It’s time for the media to leave it alone and to back off.’”

“I felt really good about the interview … so, for the network to take the most salacious part when taken out of context, and put it up online for people who didn’t see the whole interview, is very upsetting to me and that’s something I’m going to have to deal with them,” she added. “There will be a very intense discussion about that.”

Click inside to watch the interview that Gayle King is referring to…