Top editors at The Hollywood Reporter were fuming this week after The New York Times published an investigation by reporter Debra Kamin into the proliferation of secret anonymous smear websites in Hollywood without crediting or mentioning the nearly dozen stories that the industry trade publication had previously published on the exact same topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Times story<\/a>, titled \u201cHow to Destroy a Reputation in Hollywood, as Told in 5 Women\u2019s Lawsuits,\u201d maps a constellation of anonymous websites designed to manipulate public opinion by assailing the reputations of various women involved in high-profile legal disputes over the past several years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Hollywood Reporter editor in chief Maer Roshan called out the New York Times over his outlet\u2019s reporting. The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images<\/p>\n The piece, which ran over 3,000 words, was an elaborate production featuring what appeared to be multiple photo shoots of the alleged victims, packaged together in the multimedia storytelling style typically reserved for the Times\u2019 most high-profile stories. The only problem was that the majority of what Kamin included in her story had already been reported by THR senior writer Gary Baum who has written<\/a> exhaustively on the topic<\/a> of smear websites in Hollywood for over a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTHR\u2019s Gary Baum spent nine months working on this series, which unearthed most of the material that later resurfaced in the Times,\u201d said THR\u2019s editor-in-chief Maer Roshan in a statement. \u201cGiven the attention his stories received, it\u2019s disappointing that the paper of record\u2019s 3,000-word opus on the scandal omitted the outlet that broke it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The expose in question centered on the proliferation of secret anonymous smear websites that power lawyer Bryan Freedman was involved in (he has denied any involvement). Gregory P. Mango<\/p>\n This practice was at the center of the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni lawsuits. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n There are no hard rules on when a writer or publication should credit another for published work that serves as reference material, but it is customary and a widely acknowledged professional courtesy (Full disclosure: I previously worked at THR. I also worked at The New York Times\u2019 Rome Bureau.) <\/p>\n \u201cDebra Kamin\u2019s article was an original piece of journalism that she reported independently over months, interviewing more than 60 people and reviewing court documents, chat transcripts and hundreds of websites and social media profiles,\u201d a Times spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top editors at The Hollywood Reporter were fuming this week after The New York Times published an investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1208,9,11,10,980,50622,49984],"class_list":["post-367867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-media","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-times","tag-page-six-hollywood","tag-the-hollywood-reporter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}