NatGeo Allegedly Rejects CNN Reporter from Killing Jesus Premiere ‘Out of Respect’ for O’Reilly

By Tina NguyenMar 23rd, 2015, 5:09 pm
 

Tonight marks the miniseries premiere of National Geographic’s adaptation of the Bill O’Reilly book and bestseller Killing Jesus. However, according to one CNN reporter, negative coverage of O’Reilly is enough to get you kicked off the red carpet press list.

Tom Kludt, a media reporter for CNN, recently covered the controversy surrounding O’Reilly’s earlier reporting: whether he fabricated an account of witnessing nuns being executed in El Salvador, witnessed the suicide of Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend, or exaggerated his coverage of the Falklands War. (O’Reilly, for his part, has not retracted his accounts and Fox has stood by him.)

Thanks to that coverage, however, Kludt allgedly got kicked off the red carpet list for the premiere of the film, which stars Kelsey Grammer, Stephen Moyer, and John Rhys-Davies:

Chris Albert, SVP Communications Worldwide, sent us the following comment:

As we were finalizing the carpet list, we realized that our red carpet was overflowing. CNN had numerous requests for credentials and we needed to limit it to one crew. So we decided to decline a reporter who by his own admission doesn’t cover red carpets. But we would like to thank Tom for bringing all this extra attention to our premiere tonight for “Killing Jesus.”

Kludt himself admits he has not covered a red carpet before:

But he disputes NatGeo’s characterization of their exchange:

Seriously, it probably would have been a lot easier if Kludt were just allowed to attend:

[Image via screenshot/Fox]

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