Who leaked Suzy Shuster’s scathing e-mail to Alycia Lane about the bikini photos? Not Suzy Shuster, according to her husband, NFL Network talking head Rich Eisen.

The Associated Press found this out recently from a story it ran on January 30th about Lane’s pending lawsuit against CBS 3. The AP ran this correction last night: “In a Jan. 30 story about fired TV news anchor Alycia Lane, the Associated Press erroneously reported that the wife of NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen tipped tabloid gossip columnists to the existence of bikini photos sent to her husband by Lane.”

Although there was a widespread rumor that Shuster, a college football reporter and Huffington Post blogger had leaked the the e-mail to Page Six, Eisen’s PR man definitively squashed that rumor yesterday.

“That did not happen and has never been reported to have happened,” said Tom Keaney of Rubenstein Communications, which represents Eisen. The columnist who wrote about the photos at the time hasn’t publicly revealed how he learned about the photos.

Keaney denied the accusation again to The Daily Examiner yesterday and was surprised that it even came up.

“I’ve never seen that printed before then,” he said.

Mr. Keaney said that he’d alerted the AP about the “erroneous” portion of the sentence right after it was published on January 30th.

Here’s more fun: Mr. Keaney works for Rubenstein Communications, which represents Eisen. Rubenstein has a list of many heavy-hitting clients in its roster, including the Guggenheim Museum, the New York Giants, and many other Manhattan institutions. Among those? The New York Post and Page Six.

After we hung up with Keaney, he called us back about an hour after spoke.

“Just to be clear, we started handling Rich after the whole bikini incident,” he says.

Okay?

We contacted the New York Post months ago — via Rubenstein — and asked if any of the Page Six writers would be willing to speak about their obsession with Lane. They politely declined.

As for Shuster, not sending the e-mail to Page Six, well, that’s surprising. It’s not like she flies off the handle easily or anything.

Correction: News Anchor Story [AP]

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Alycia Lane, Rumors, Lawyers, Cultural Ephemera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by A.J. Daulerio on 2/8/08 in Alycia Lane, Rumors, Lawyers, Cultural Ephemera