What did Telemundo know and when did it know it? Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa issued a statement announcing that he and his wife, Corina, were separating after 20 years of marriage. Two hours later, Telemundo television anchor Mirthala Salinas delivered the story to her Spanish-language viewers on the Friday evening news. "The rumors were true," she declared of the split after an introduction that described the story as a "political scandal" that had left "many people with their mouth open."
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| Antonio Villaraigosa Sex Scandal With Telemundo's Mirthala Salinas |
Oh the humanity! It takes a lot of will not to just fly in with the double entendres. The LA mayor fessed up that he has been going at it with Telemundo news babe Mirthala Salinas. Yes, the same person that said the story had "mouths open."
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The story of Villaraigosa's affair, which had been the subject of political gossip for weeks, broke Tuesday in the Los Angeles Daily News, so his and her jaw dropping admissions are not really needed. "I have a relationship with Ms. Salinas, and I take full responsibility for my actions," he said at a news conference after a swearing-in ceremony for school board members at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion downtown.
By late afternoon, the Channel 52 anchor dropped her own true confessions. "I first got to know the mayor at a professional level, where we went on to become friends," she said. "The current relationship grew out of our existing friendship."
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The LA Times reports that Telemundo executives defended Salinas and noted that she had been moved in August 2006 from her political beat to cover general assignment stories and serve as a backup anchor.
"Mirthala Salinas is one of our most respected reporters and a great professional," said Manuel Abud, Telemundo's general manager in Los Angeles. "Telemundo is fully committed to journalistic excellence. Every day we strive for the highest standards of journalistic ethics and make every effort to protect our objectivity and avoid possible conflicts of interest."
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Conflicts of interest? Are they serious? These two are very fortunate to be in LA where Paris Hilton goes to jail for 23 days for a probation violation and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's wife gets a pass for far worse, a nine-year warrant that dated way back to 1998 after she failed to appear in court on charges of driving without insurance on a suspended license in an unregistered car.
In anywhere but LA, people would be searching for answers from the mayor and the news babe and what kind of preferential coverage he received from the network. Shouldn't Telemundo be asking questions of their own anchor?
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