David Letterman’s reputation certainly hasn’t taken a hit the way Tiger Woods’ has, despite the fact that both of them committed acts of infidelity. Why has Letterman’s reputation done so much better than Woods’? Well for one, Letterman came out and admitted it–he controlled the message. Secondly, Letterman was sort of the victim in that particular situation because someone was blackmailing him.

About 4 million people tuned to see what Letterman would have to say about the guilty plea entered that day by a former TV news producer who admitted he’d tried to shake down the late night host to the tune of $2 million by exposing Letterman’s taste in interns/staffers. One week earlier, Letterman averaged 3.7 million people on Tuesday night.

Now, Letterman’s reputation has still suffered, and he’ll need a business reputation management campaign to fix the damage–but at least he controls the message.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tvblog/2010/03/david-letterman-scores-again-w.html