TMZ's Principles
Harvey Levin, the schlocky managing editor of thieving celebrity news conglomerate TMZ, will have you know he's just a naturally honest man playing this dirty game. "We don't want to be a red carpet," he said, strangely, during a July interview at the EconCeleb conference. Harvey has drawn a very clear line for himself about what he will and won't cover; a line that goes back and forth and around in pinwheels until we really don't know if he's just messing with all of us:
"I won't do stolen documents, I won't do medical records if someone hands it." He tossed someone out of his office for trying to shop Michael Jackson documents because he was sure they were stolen from a law firm...
Even Levin can still be shocked: "When Britney Spears was in the hospital, it was shocking to me but we were contacted by medical personnel. ... You really have to draw the line." They don't skip medical stories-TMZ broke the Dennis Quaid story about his newborn twins being overdosed and might report on how Spears is doing anecdotally during a hospital stay. The hardest decision Levin's had to make: publishing Alec Baldwin's voice-mail tirade aimed at his daughter.
He lost some sleep over that one.
