CBS News' Armen Keteyian defended his interview with Penn State Univ. assistant football coach Mike McQueary, a central figure in the child sexual abuse scandal, that aired on Tuesday's "Evening News." The interview was roundly criticized after being hyped as an exclusive, and Keteyian yesterday said on WJFK-AM, "Criticize or whatever you want, but I can tell you that my job is to stay on the story or in front of the story. And had ABC or NBC or CNN or ESPN had that moment with Mike McQueary, they would have played it just like we played it.” He said, "I could have gone in a lot of different directions, but I’ve done this a long time, and I know when to push the accelerator down and when to leave it off. And that was not the time to hassle Mike McQueary. And I just left with what I had.” Keteyian added, "When Mike allowed the camera to go on, I was frankly surprised, but I wasn’t going to turn it into a moment that would have eliminated future considerations with that family. ... Most of the off-the-record stuff was strictly me trying to drill down into what he did, when he did it, what his feelings were, what he did after the game, where he was he, death threats. Mike wasn’t gonna go there, so I just decided, let’s go in a different direction here. And I didn’t feel like I needed to pressure him at that point in time" ("The Sports Junkies," WJFK-AM, 11/16).
