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Yesterday a former reporter for the Associated Press detailed an uncomfortable interview that she had with Bill Cosby in the 1990s. But a new clip from an interview from earlier this month shows that the news organization didn't have to dig too far into its archives to find an example of the TV icon trying desperately to take charge of an interview.
On November 6, Bill Cosby and his wife Camille sat down with the Associated Press to talk about loaning their private art collection to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art . The interviewer decides to ask Cosby about older allegations of sexual assault that were getting increasingly more publicity. Cosby repeatedly brushes off the question and explains in a couple different ways that he has no intention of responding to that question.
But after the formal portion of the interview, the tape keeps rolling, Cosby still has his mic on and he demands the Associated Press cut that portion of the interview. Cosby tells the interviewer: "I think if you want to consider yourself serious, that it will not appear anywhere."
Cosby asks the interviewer to get on the phone immediately with his editor to relay Cosby's demands. He says that he thought the Associated Press was a respectable news organization that wasn't going to bother asking about all those rape allegations: "If you will just tell your bosses the reason why we didn't say that up front was because we thought that AP had the integrity to not ask."
The interviewer says that, sure, his "no comment" likely didn't have a lot of value, but he never promises Cosby that it's off limits. For the video released on November 10 , the Associated Press did edit out Cosby's refusal to talk about the allegations he drugged and sexually assaulted women. But in the weeks since the interview, the allegations against Cosby have only grown more newsworthy. Two more women, including Janice Dickinson , have come forward to say that Cosby, too, assaulted them.
And the respectable news organization known as the Associated Press decided the full interview had news value:
