TMZ is the most trusted name in news

Not only did TMZ have the Kobe news at least a half hour before anyone else, more importantly, they got it right.

I got a TMZ screengrab text way before anyone else was reporting it, and if you are like me, as soon as you see TMZ, you are pretty confident in the story. And of course, as the day went on, ABC News and all of the local stations in La shit the bed as they reported the story.

 

How did we get to this point?

 

Except they didn't get it right. The only aspects they nailed were that there was a helicopter crash and that Kobe Bryant died in it.

They got all other salient points wrong.

 

TMZ didn’t get everything right. It got some things right and suffered no consequences for what it got wrong because TMZ is not held to any particular standard by its consumers.

We got to this point because TMZ is a place anonymous sources can go to dish about celebrities, and the Internet makes it possible for said outlets to report things right away.

TV stations, even in LA, are not staffed by uniformly elite, fast-thinking reporters on a Sunday morning. TMZ can make its calls to local authorities (or agents) and make progress while those reporters have to be right about whatever they report.

 

This is what I received via text at 11:27 a.m. Pacific yesterday

 

TMZ pays too, correct? So if you're a first responder and you know you're dealing with the death of someone of that magnitude, it's not hard to see how that be tempting to call it in and make some cash. And people know they pay. I've always heard that it's a known thing.

 

You'd think Deadspinners 2.0 would've been all over this.

 

How would that conversation go, exactly?

First responder: "I know something you don't know!"

TMZ: "What is it?"

First responder: "Mega celebrity dies in helicopter crash."

TMZ: "Who?"

First responder: "How much?"

 

How TMZ gets all those scoops

 

First responders in Los Angeles get paid and have benefits that would make Goldman Sachs executives blush. So I guess that the extra thousand they get from TMZ is something, but not in the larger picture.

 

Imagine how people would melt down if ESPN paid $10,000 to an LA County Sheriff source to get the Kobe info 10 mins before everyone else. ESPN certainly has more money than TMZ. Why not compete on the same turf?

Because the most basic premise in news gathering ought to be you don’t pay sources for info.

Any discussion about why TMZ gets this stuff starts and ends there. There is really no point in debating it further without debating that as the only part that matters.

 

Here is a PBS Northwest report about who got what wrong yesterday. A LOT went wrong. Per this article, none of it was TMZ's.
https://www.nwpb.org/2020/01/26/timeline-of-bad-information-in-first-wave-of-kobe-bryant-story/

TMZ's first tweet was as follows:

Short, and accurate.

Read the story to find out all the other non-TMZ fuck ups.
TMZ was also the first to report the daughter dying.
https://www.nwpb.org/2020/01/26/timeline-of-bad-information-in-first-wave-of-kobe-bryant-story/