Gossip Cop Week In Review

Adam Duritz Adnan Ghalib Alec Baldwin Avatar Beyonce Bob Dylan Britney Spears Chris Martin Coldplay Derek Jeter Eclipse Emmy Rossum Fidel Castro George Clooney Gerard Butler Gossip Girl Gwyneth Paltrow Hilary Duff Jennifer Aniston Joe Lieberman Justin Timberlake Katie Holmes King of Pop Kristen Stewart Leonardo DiCaprio Lindsay Lohan Madonna Megan Fox Michael Jackson miley cyrus Minka Kelly New Moon Perez Hilton Robert Pattinson Robin Williams Russell Crowe Snoop Dogg Susan Boyle Tom Cruise Twilight

11:22 am, August 30th, 2009

Gossip Cop just completed its first month on the beat, and we’ve been incredibly busy busting bad dish.

This past week started off with a smattering of poorly reported Perez Hilton pieces. We learned that Perez doesn’t just turn a blind eye to fact checking, apparently he has one, too. He actually compared handsome “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson to the blue creature from “Avatar.”

This week also marked the second anniversary of Perez’s “scoop” that Fidel Castro had died – he was, and continues to be, dead wrong. And we also pointed how Perez got it wrong both when he initially reported that Beyonce was being sued by a reality star, and how George Clooney broke his hand.

And while we’ve grown accustomed to Perez’s inaccuracies, we were a bit surprised by how legitimate news agencies like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post dropped the ball this week.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman was asked about the possibility of Alec Baldwin running against him for his senate seat. The major media picked up on Lieberman’s “make my day” response, but it took Gossip Cop to alert the other news agencies that Baldwin’s non-serious challenge to Lieberman was, in fact, an old comment the “30 Rock” star made to Playboy, and one in which he also said he had no plans whatsoever to leave New York.

But it wasn’t just CNN. The venerable Chicago Tribune posted a video on its website of a man, bearing a resemblance to Michael Jackson, jumping out of an L.A. Coroner’s van, and posed the question whether the King of Pop was indeed possibly still alive.

And the New York Times, Washington Post and the BBC were among those who were completely misguided when reporting that Bob Dylan might voice GPS directions after the the “Jokerman” singer joked on his radio show that he was approached by auto manufacturers. Who’s laughing now? (Gossip Cop.)

In “Twilight Tales,” a story brewed that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart strolled through Vancouver to go out for coffee together. Gossip Cop filtered the fact out from the fiction. We also broke details about a second hard cover bookazine that Us Weekly is preparing about the Twilight Saga and its stars, slated to hit bookshelves around the time of the release of “New Moon” in November. And we’ve been all over the controversy of whether the Twilight Saga will be told in four or five films.

And once again stories surfaced that Pattinson and Stewart were moving in together. This time the yarn that was spun had Stewart buying a $3 million “love nest” in L.A. for them. Not true.

Miss Information: This week while it was true that Madonna was booed in Romania for speaking her mind about the treatment of that nation’s Gypsies, it was totally false that she’s training for a six-day, 151-mile marathon through the Sahara desert.

Katie Holmes was again the subject of several inaccurate stories. The tabs wrongly reported that she’s happier when she’s away from Tom Cruise, whom they also claimed controls her diet and career choices. There was also a tale that she’s designing “uniforms” for the Church of Scientology – it’s uniformly not true.

And with Lindsay Lohan’s burglarized home came a slew of stories claiming she had “incriminating videos” and more than $2 million in borrowed jewels stolen from her safe. Her rep told Gossip Cop than neither rumor was accurate. Another Lohan story, not based in reality, had her looking to star in a reality series about her own “trials and tribulations” finding work as an actress. Gossip Cop found no truth to that either.

Wrong Romance: The rumor linking Jennifer Aniston to Gerard Butler returned for another round – and it’s still false. Stories that “Phantom of the Opera” star Emmy Rossum is making beautiful music with Counting Crows lead Adam Duritz are also way off key. And the New York Post struck out in a piece about Yankees captain Derek Jeter being engaged to “Friday Night Lights “ star Minka Kelly.

Casting Corrections: Hundreds of outlets reported that Robin Williams, who starred in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” was asked to play “Britain’s Got Talent” standout Susan Boyle. (That’s like mistaking us for rumor cop.) Gossip Cop was the first to dispel that cross-dressing rumor. We also were ahead of the pack to report that Megan Fox is NOT signed to star as Catwoman.  And the story that Justin Timberlake and Snoop Dogg are doing a musical together also went up in smoke, thanks to Gossip Cop.

Miscellaneous Mistakes: Gossip Cop debunked the rumor that Gwyneth Paltrow told her husband Chris Martin that he should go solo from Coldplay; that Britney Spears is “pining” for paparazzo Adnan Ghalib, against whom there’s a restraining order; that Leonardo DiCaprio was told by the producers of his film “The Inception” to drop 30 pounds; that Hilary Duff refused to leave her trailer on the set of “Gossip Girl;” and that Miley Cyrus was offered more than $1 million to do a Guess jeans ad.

And – pat on our back – the British tabloid The Express had to eat crow after Gossip Cop corrected its fabricated story about Russell Crowe causing a fight in a pub outside of London. It never happened, and after Gossip Cop called them out, the paper issued Crowe a public apology.

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