The New York Times has written a heartfelt love letter to Maria Bartiromo of General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s CNBC. The most interesting part to me is that Maria feels that Chuck Prince was using her "relationship" with former Citigroup (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thomson -- about which I posted earlier this year -- to divert attention from his mismanagement of the bank. With Prince out, Maria's riding high. But Todd must be kicking himself -- if he hadn't gotten into the Maria mess, he might be in a position to take over from Prince.

Since I have had the privilege of being interviewed by Maria Bartiromo -- here's a link from August -- and was called a couple of times last week to discuss the situation at Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), her status at CNBC is of more than academic interest to me. I have never met her in person, but her interviews have always been sharp and professional.

But the Todd Thomson incident raised questions which the article did not completely squelch. As a reminder, in January unidentified executives at Citigroup, which is both a CNBC advertiser and a frequent subject of its coverage, told several publications that among the reasons Thomson was fired was his decision to invite Maria to speak to a group of Citigroup clients in Asia and to fly her to that event in the company jet.

Maria said that her husband and her company were behind her, and everything she did was completely above board. Her comment about the situation: "Something happened between Todd Thomson and Chuck Prince, and somehow I got wrapped up in it. Clearly, there was another agenda going on."

It looks to me like a he-said/she-said situation, and with Thomson and Prince out of Citigroup, Maria is the surviving party. So as long as she continues to prosper at CNBC, there'll be plenty of people like me willing to be interviewed by her, and a big audience for her work.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup and GE stock and has no financial interest in Merrill Lynch securities.