Gossip Cop defends TMZ’s Harvey Levin (It’s true!)
2:32 pm, October 9th, 2009
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Gossip Cop often takes issue with TMZ for its intrusive videos and occasional inaccurate reports.
Just this week, Gossip Cop twice corrected TMZ, including an article titled, “Letterman’s Former Hookup Banned From CBS set.” The site claimed Stephanie Birkitt was barred from setting foot on the “Late Show” set when, in reality, she is on a paid leave of absence.
Nevertheless today we support TMZ founder Harvey Levin, whose phone records — thanks to a warrant — were obtained by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.
The police went through Levin’s phone records to find out who his sources were for TMZ’s exclusive coverage of Mel Gibson’s drunk driving arrest and subsequent embarrassing tirade in 2006. That was a significant and accurate story broken by TMZ.
And while understandably the sheriff’s office was trying to find out who internally tipped off Levin, it’s incumbent upon that office to look within its own house for the leakers, not metaphorically break into Levin’s house.
The law must protect reporters from revealing their sources, but it appears the sheriff’s office is trying to circumvent this journalistic shield. Now some may argue that they don’t think of Levin as a “journalist,” and they are entitled to that opinion, but the same rules have to apply.
Also, one cannot forget that the sheriff’s office, while searching for the leakers within its department, was thereby privy to other calls made to and from Levin, which were completely unrelated to this case, and may have been of an entirely personal nature.
TMZ has its flaws, and we will continue to call those out, but it is also one of those organizations that at least tries to authenticate its stories. Usually cops stick together, but this time Gossip Cop is breaking ranks to support Levin over the sheriff’s department.
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