The Lede is watching Katie Couric’s interview Thursday with Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame football star who said he was tricked into believing first that he had a girlfriend and then that the girlfriend died of leukemia. The interview is being show at 3 p.m. Eastern time on ABC in New York. Excerpts from the interview have been published on the “Katie†show’s Web site.
Need Manti Te’o 101 Here’s what you need to know about the story before today’s #MantiSpeaks interview: http://t.co/UTYKcQC6
Teo had provided one of the heartwarming stories of the 2012 college football season, playing through the deaths of his grandmother and, he said, his girlfriend. But on Jan. 16, the Web site Deadspin published an investigation into the linebacker’s claims about the girlfriend, setting off a flurry of questions about Te’o's story and when he knew about the hoax.
As our colleague Brian Stelter has reported, the spokesman hired by Te’o’s family in recent days, Matthew Hiltzik, is also the longtime spokesman for Katie Couric. The ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap interviewed Te’o for two and a half hours last week, butTe’o’s representatives insisted that it take place off-camera.
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