Soup

They don’t have to compete with it, all they have to do is purchase the information from TMZ. Newspapers don’t, but plenty of so-called mainstream news organizations do. There’s a tremendous hypocrisy involved here because, I’ve already used one simile of cocaine growers, lets use another one, this is like a grey market gentleman businessman who doesn’t dirty his hands, this would be networks, and you have your behind the scenes thugs that do the wet work.

So everybody sits around and harrumphs about the poor ethics of TMZ, they’re buying news and it’s all unethical, that’s all true but turn on CNN, turn on CBS, turn on ABC, what are we seeing? We’re seeing the same coverage, much of it derived from, if not taken directly from the same people they’re criticizing. It’s just a question of plausible deniability. It’s a distraction, I don’t think the problem lies with TMZ, I think the problem is in what we define what national news coverage should be.