Howard Kurtz says Jill Kelley “fervently wants to erase her public image as, to use the phrase that has dogged her, the Other Other Woman” in the Petraeus affair
“As much as I appreciate that they want to be the first one to come out with a headline, regardless of whether they did any fact-checking, they have to consider the impact they have on our life and our children’s lives,” she says. “Just because it’s repeated doesn’t make it true. It was living a nightmare.”
People she never met, including a hairdresser who claimed her as a customer, were quoted as friends of hers, Kelley says.
She sounds naïve at times about the way the modern media machine functions, baffled as to why she is deemed newsworthy at all. She is frustrated that even her Wikipedia page has had basic errors of fact, such as her date of birth.
But while some news organizations rushed to paint an unflattering portrait of Kelley, her long silence—on the advice of a previous publicist—left journalists with little access to firsthand information. Her new spokesman, Gene Grabowski of the Washington firm Levick, has a different approach.
Related: Jill & Scott Kelley: “We believe Congress must consider how the rights that we carefully safeguard in other forms deserve equal protection in this age of digital communication” | Jill Kelley emails Tampa mayor to complain about media | FBI agent named, houses staked out in Petraeus affair | A guide to graphic Petraeus explainers | Who’s named and who remains nameless in Petraeus affair reporting
