Calling a Foul on AOL’s Reggie Miller Coverage
8:00 am, August 14th, 2009
(Deadspin.com)
What does AOL stand for these days – Already Old Links?
The portal recently posted a story about basketball great Reggie Miller that was neither original nor entirely accurate, having used its source material from an old Deadspin link.
The story was about the bad blood between Miller and Alex von Furstenberg, son of designer Diane von Furstenberg. Basically, if you hadn’t heard, von Furstenberg is engaged to a woman named Ali Kay, whom Miller met in March. Miller and Kay then began texting each other a lot, and even met up twice (nothing sexual). A couple months later – after having not texted for a while – Miller had removed Kay from his “contacts.” That prompted Kay to send Miller two suggestive photos that Gossip Cop now has. Von Furstenberg then found out about the texting, leading to various sorts of threats and a little legal wrangling. The two men eventually (sort of) made up. Until – out of the blue - von Furstenberg had a plane fly over beaches in southern California this past weekend with a banner that read, “Reggie Miller Stop Pursuing Married Women.”
Gossip Cop would like to point out that von Furstenberg and Kay are NOT married, despite what the clothing heir’s air ad said.
Now that we’re up to speed, let’s get down to a couple of problems. First, the piece that AOL posted was an old story from Deadspin that the site had even revised well before AOL ran it. And most, if not all of the points under dispute, had already been disproved or otherwise addressed. Also, the story states that Miller “allegedly harassed [Kay] by phone, including sending her 53 text messages over the course of less than four hours.” While he did send her 53 text messages, Gossip Cop has obtained phone records that show that Miller was responding to the more than 53 texts that Kay sent to him. Hardly harassment.
Hopefully the next time AOL uses Deadspin they won’t get spun by an old tale.
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