Gayle King plunges CBS News into huge freebie scandal over Blue Origin trip to space

Gayle King’s trip to space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket may have broken her employer CBS’ rules about accepting gifts for good coverage.

King, 70, was blasted into orbit on an all-female flight Tuesday morning, with gushing and glossy coverage on her own network hailing the landmark flight.

But it’s still unclear who – if anyone – footed the bill for the expedition, with a non-celebrity facing a $300,000 fare to make the same trip.

Bezos certainly got huge exposure for his fledgling space exploration company and was seen opening the capsule door to welcome his friends back to Earth.

Breathtaking footage showed King and other celebrities including Lauren Sanchez and Katy Perry screaming while weightless and peering into the vast emptiness of space.

The flight itself lasted just 11 minutes, but there was plenty of build-up to blast-off and screaming excitement after the A-List crew touched back down in West Texas, with CBS alumnus Oprah Winfrey among those waiting to greet the cew.

A fleet of Rivian cars – whose largest shareholder is Bezos’ company Amazon – helped ferry the astronauts to their spacecraft.

It is unclear if Bezos personally authorized a freebie for his fiancee Sanchez and her friends.

But Tuesday’s trip bought Blue Origin the type of free coverage equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising spending.

Ultra-wealthy adventurers who fancy a trip to space will likely be flocking to join Blue Origin’s spaceflight waitlist on seeing the A-List expedition.

And the flawless flight – complete with a nifty booster rocket that landed back on Earth afterwards – likely caught the eye of the federal government too.

Bezos could be hoping to secure some of the ultra-lucrative space exploration contracts bestowed on fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which have helped make Musk the world’s richest man.

Gayle King, you are officially an astronaut,’ a CBS correspondent was heard asking King, the host of CBS Mornings, seconds after she touched down.

‘How do you feel?’

‘I still can’t accept that word,’ the host of CBS Mornings replied, visibly emotional by her ten-minute undertaking.

‘But I will say this was not a ride. What happened to us… this was a bona fide flight.’

The rocket’s instructor, she gushed, had her and the others ‘so well prepared.

‘Every noise we heard, we knew.

The flight instructor said I am her best success story,’ she added.

When asked why, King conceded: ‘She’s never had somebody go through the course who is terrified of flying.’

The course at Houston’s Astronaut Training Center, in itself, is costly – teaching prospective astronauts techniques to keep their senses while skirting the internationally recognized boundary of outer-space.

Ex-CNN media analyst Oliver Darcy in February  aired curiosity about who green-lighted King’s part in the project, writing how her seemingly free ride into space ‘seem(s) like a conflict of interest’ in his Status newsletter.

He and others pointed out CBS News’s strict policies against anchors accepting high-priced handouts for ethical reasons – a dynamic seemingly absent from statements issued by CBS since, before the network aired the Texas-based mission for all to see.

The network extensively interviewed Gayle about the mission as well, covering her training, inventory, and the rocket’s technology all the way until its launch Monday.

As they took off, King and other crew members rang a bell in a celebratory procession also chronicled by CBS.

The liftoff was chronicled in-depth as well – as was the life-changing view from the earth’s atmosphere.

As several bashed the mission as a senseless spectacle online, King talked herself up during her post-flight interview.

‘I am so proud of me right now,’ she said shortly after setting foot again on Texas soil.

‘Eleanor Roosevelt once said courage is doing something that scares you but you do it anyway and I stepped out of my comfort zone in a way I never thought was possible for me.

Then, for a piece published Tuesday, King told her employer how she would be willing to undergo such a mission again.

Calling the overall experience ‘peaceful’ and ‘oddly quiet,’ she said: ‘Now that I’ve been through it, I know now that I could do it again.’

In an interview for ELLE magazine’s April digital issue, she said of receiving the invitation to go on the trip from Lauren Sanchez: ‘I had a lot of trepidation – I still do.

‘But I also know it’s very interesting to be terrified and excited at the same time.’

The seasoned journalist continued: ‘I haven’t felt like this since childbirth, really. Because I knew childbirth was going to hurt.

‘But it’s also stepping out of your comfort zone.’

The rocket launch aired on Kings’ “CBS Mornings” as part of an ongoing series, Never Too Late. It highlights stories of ‘people conquering new challenges or embracing a second chapter at any age in life,’ CBS notes on its website.