But Levin could afford turnover. Those who survived, thrived. When they burned out, Levin would force them to hand over their source information, sometimes hounding them for weeks until they did. But the combination of intraoffice competition and the shift to tabloid-style content gradually began to affect the office atmosphere — especially for women.
Those scoops, however, required hard, tireless work: staking out courthouses, following up on every call on the tip line, keeping friendly with bellhops and cocktail waitresses and hairdressers, and maintaining a reputation as the place to send a tip anywhere outside of New York. Some of the scoops just arrived: Mike Walters, who had been with the show from the start, loved Vegas and spent a lot of his free time there.
Tipsters could be inside the legal system, inside an airline , or inside the celebrity family Jackson and Lohan in particular.
Everyone was a potential source, ready to be groomed and, if necessary, paid. These critiques have been launched at tabloids for decades, but money remains the most reliable form of obtaining material about celebrities. But we have to verify every story that we do. In November , for example, a source came forward with the recording of the Michael Richards racist comedy routine. The source wanted several thousand dollars for the tape, and TMZ would pay it, but the source wanted the cash immediately — as in before-the-banks-opened immediately.
His solution, according to multiple staffers working for the site at the time: Call every TMZ staffer and force them to immediately take out their ATM max and bring it down to the TMZ offices. The staffers were reimbursed, but the story highlights just what lengths TMZ was willing to go to obtain — and pay — a source. Indeed, several investigative reporters who cover the Los Angeles courthouse speculated that TMZ has dozens of government employees on its payroll.
These claims lack substantiation, but several scoops — including access to the evidence photos of Rihanna's beaten face or footage of rapper The Game in police holding , which one misguided staffer purportedly attempted to pay for with a Telepictures check — suggest that those within the system do regularly send tips to TMZ.
TMZ scoops linked to government employees, however, have led to multiple wide-scale internal investigations. Parachini contested his firing, but the optics, especially when Stuelp lost her job in a series of layoffs and returned to TMZ, were damningly suggestive, but never substantiated. Levin's claims concerning the intensive vetting and verification of scoops are, by most accounts, true. TMZ, with the sizable and highly suable bank of Time Warner behind it, simply cannot afford to be wrong.
Which is why TMZ relies so heavily on assets : tangible proof that something did happen, that someone did behave this way.
According to sources, TMZ writers go back and forth with in-house counsel several times a day, exchanging a word here, extracting another one there, in order for a headline or post to pass the standard for libel and defamation set forth by the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times v.
Which is not to say its reporting has been infallible: The site retracted a story about Janet Jackson slapping Paris Jackson and claimed that Lil Wayne was being read last rites after an overdose last year.
Put differently, going to the police to stop TMZ from using a video, photo, or other piece of information becomes tantamount to publicizing that activity.
According to this logic, a celebrity would rather be in thrall to TMZ than have certain revelations of their private lives made public — a notion substantiated by Justin Bieber's racist video. We turn down a lot of stories.
But as the trail of Bieber exclusives suggests, it might also get something in return. TMZ also exploits a mostly untapped resource: the massive stream of court documents processed through the Los Angeles Court System. Owning the source — either by paying for it in the form of tips or paying the videographer who catches it — also sets TMZ apart from its competitors.
Their only goal: Get celebrities on tape however you can without chasing them or breaking the law. They specialize not in photographs but video, no matter how unremarkable. But its existence punctured the celebrity myth not through the scandal of their words or actions, but the very banality of their existence. In these meetings, Levin functions as a sort of hapless, middle-aged father figure who might not understand things like Google Glass , but knows the business better than anyone.
Even the lawyers get in on the mix, discussing which stories can be covered, how, and with what language. By next fall, it is expected that the show will be cleared across the country. Sometimes TV makes imminent sense, and sometimes other things make more sense. We have a combination of all of that going right now. The fact that the mere mention of its name brings a strong reaction is a key revenue driver.
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I did not watch TMZ for more than 30 seconds before changing the channel, and when the commercials come on and advertise TMZ, I groan, literally. Why anyone would spend time gathering and watching the garbage they air, I have no clue. TMZ constantly mocks, harasses, and stalk celebrities, making up lies and emphasizing mistakes you could catch any normal human doing. Celebrities are't criminals, but they aren't gods either. They don't deserve being stalked by these trash for mistakes I'm sure most of us make.
They are people who just happen to be good at acting or singing, just as a programmer would be good at programming. Yet you wouldn't stalk him, the person who made your computer what it is and has probably provided more entertainment for you than celebrities ever could.
TMZ is trash, pure and simple. They make a living off causing others pain and ridicule. But perhaps it would be bearable, if not for the smug and childish attitudes of the staff. They're hypocrites of the highest caliber. Laughing at every fall, picking at every hair, and acting as if they are better than the celebrities themselves. The worst part yet is the people who actually enjoy this crap, they're no better than the staff. Trash content, a trash staff, and a trash audience. I am surprised it has not been canceled yet.
Details Edit. Release date September 10, United States. Aside from WarnerMedia, which it intends to spin off in a deal with Discovery Inc. Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day. September 13, pm. Related Stories.
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