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Action News Issues Statement Squashing One of the Rumors Spawned from Dave Portnoy Video
Published:
Action News posted this statement to social on Tuesday afternoon:
Portnoy came out Monday with a video clip showing a contentious interview between himself and an unnamed Action News reporter. This statement is a response to the speculation that Katro was the reporter.
We mentioned this in both of our stories, but as a refresher, Katro reported the original story on Sunday evening, and went live during the 11 p.m. news. Her name is on the digital version of the story, which was published Monday morning around 8 a.m. It’s highly likely that it was written overnight by someone on the web staff. Portnoy was on the west coast (Arizona) and released his video at 10:36 a.m., eastern, so it was highly unlikely that Katro woke up at the ass-crack of dawn to interview Portnoy on five hours of sleep after working Sunday night.
If you go through the replies to a lot of the Barstool stuff, Katro’s name was being thrown around, so Action News came out 24 hours later to clearly state that it wasn’t her. They do not, however, mention who actually did the interview, and the statement itself is a little strange. They talk about a Portnoy “press conference,” which was just him addressing the incident on video. There was no press conference. And nobody questioned her reporting on the original story, so that line could have been omitted entirely. I am sure she was getting some shit from people who thought she went after Portnoy, so Action News came out to shut that down, as they should.
Finally, to repeat a paragraph from an earlier story:
We got a bunch of emails, and there are a bunch of tweets out there, claiming that the reporter who did the interview is TaRhonda Thomas. For what it’s worth, you can’t actually see this person on Portnoy’s laptop, so this is a product of people listening to the voice and trying to match it. The emails/tweets may be 100% true, we just don’t have any way to make a visual confirmation here.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com