So Manti Te’o, who most Americans believe to be a big old liar, visited Katie Couric‘s office for his first official post-scandal interview, set to air tomorrow. While we’re interested in the fact that he admitted to “briefly” lying about the fake dead girlfriend hoax for six weeks after learning that he’d been duped (yeah right), we’d like to examine the “Inside PR” aspects of the story.

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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Photo: Splash News

So yesterday, news broke all over Twitter that Alec Baldwin was booted from an American Airlines flight for playing Words With Friends after the flight attendant told passengers to shut down their devices. Today, visitors to @AlecBaldwin are greeted with a deactivated message.

Our TVNewser colleague Alex Weprin got a response via tweet (of course) from Baldwin’s publicists at Hiltzik Strategies about the disablement: “@HiltzikStrat: @alexweprin – just focused on #30Rock for now.” In a couple more words, reps told People, “It’s just on hold while he focuses on 30 Rock.”

Meanwhile, Baldwin was mobbed by photographers in New York when he landed because of the incident, which you can see in this bizarre Huffington Post slideshow that has 25 pictures of Baldwin getting into a car at the airport.

Here’s a statement from American Airlines on the issue.