We love Katie and all, but no one would call her a sports journalist–and we don’t feel like the scandal is quite big enough to justify a trip to Oprah-land (though the Te’o family apparently considered Oprah and Dr. Phil before settling for Couric). So how did she score this top interview? Well, the fact that the two parties share a publicist certainly didn’t hurt. That’s right–Matthew Hiltzik of Hiltzik Strategies (MediaBeat interview after the jump) now performs crisis comms/damage control duties for both Couric and Te’o, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Te’o chose Couric over both Oprah and ESPN.

Is this standard operating procedure? Or does it raise even more questions about the players involved in this sordid tale?

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In fact, the article even got a bit of unsolicited praise from everyone’s least favorite hair-challenged blowhard, Donald Trump. And Deadspin used the opportunity to demonstrate its own frank version of public relations:

Well then! Of course, this quickly inspired Trump to rethink his opinion of the site and the people who run it:

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One problem, though: it wasn’t true.

Deadspin broke the astonishing story yesterday as a web of complex lies promoted by some of our most respected publications began to unravel and the damage control campaign began.

A summary for those who haven’t been following: Manti Te’o is a gifted football player and devout Mormon from Hawaii who claimed, via his Twitter feed and various public statements, to have developed a relationship with a woman known as Lennay Kekua who he supp0sedly met after a 2009 game between Stanford and his team, Notre Dame. She had a Twitter account with which Te’o frequently interacted, expressing his love and encouraging his fans to follow her sister (both fake accounts were later deleted).

Then came the news that, right after the (real) death of Manti’s beloved grandmother last September, Kekua passed away from leukemia approximately a month after suffering a serious car accident. Manti doesn’t attend her funeral because she had insisted that he not miss a game. South Bend Tribune fleshed out the story through interviews with Te’o before Sports Illustrated, ESPN, CBS, the New York Post, The Associated Press and pretty much everybody else in the media world reported on it. Someone set up a charity in Kekua’s name. Manti Te’o was an American classic: the tragic hero.

And then things began to fall apart.

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We thought the case had more or less resolved itself, but this week brought some surprising news: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett–a rising political star–filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, calling its sanctions against the school and the Nittany Lions “arbitrary” and “unfair” and claiming that the association’s decision to render such a harsh judgment was nothing but a PR move designed to promote and enhance its own authority.

Publicity addicts accusing others of shameless self-promotion? Well, we never!

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We found a few telling takeaways hidden between lots and lots of boring questions about Lebron James:

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.