The Drama Of It All

The events of the last week have caused us to do a little reflection on ourselves and the nature of our business. By our business, I’m referring to entertainment and gossip reporting. There’s credibility and liability issues involved with every story and picture we post here at JFX. Fortunately, since we deal with our own veteran photographers and proven sources, we do take comfort in the stories we post and stand behind them.

I mention this for a couple reasons. First off, the inaccuracies that surrounded Heath Ledger’s death have been an embarrassment to many news agencies as well as popular gossip blogs. The majority of the gossip blogs that posted inaccurate details on Heath’s death felt no obligation to correct the inaccuracies they had run. But some handled themselves ethically. (Editors note: I just laughed out loud after typing ethically in referring to our business)

TMZ has established themselves as a legitimate news source and we often credit them for many stories we run on JFX. Yet despite their considerably well placed sources and journalistic efforts in attempting to confirm their stories, they inaccurately reported that drugs had been found next to Heath’s body, which was later proven false. To their credit, TMZ did correct the story and even offered the story behind how they were misinformed and the source. Moreover, as TMZ broke the story of Heath’s death, rumors of drugs spread like wild fire over the internet with many sites crediting TMZ. After that, stories of drug laden rolled twenty dollar bills and past drug problems started cropping up on many less than ethical gossip sites. It was difficult to get confirmation, so we here at JFX decided to only run stories that our New York photographers could confirm, which was mainly that Heath had indeed passed away, his body was moved and that his family and daughter had arrived at the apartment.

Why am I babbling on about this you may be asking? Well, we’ve been getting many emails and phone calls about rumored videos of Britney Spears, which are allegedly being shopped around for a whopping $2 million. Many people claiming to have seen the clips and offering details on the videos for us to run on JFX. Perez Hilton originally ran the story crediting New of the World as the source and quoting what seemed like detailed information on the clips. What struck me was that this story was reminiscent of a previous story about how Adnan was trying to sell semi-nude photos of Britney, which later turned out to not exist. Given the track record of the Adnan haterfiers and the conspicuous absence of the story on the worlds most anti-Adnan photo agency blog, it’s rather telling if you read between the lines. My feelings were that the tapes are about as real as the alleged semi-nude pics and the restraining order Britney was rumored to have filed against Adnan. Both, of course, never existed. Adnan’s agency, Final Pixx responded by running a story on their blog stating that the $2 million video story was false and that no such videos exist.

What’s a poor blog editor to do? Well, I dropped a couple dimes and put out a feeler to Adnan, who I have already confessed to having met a couple times in the past but never knew very well. So after spending a few minutes talking to Adnan on the phone, he adamantly denied the existence of the rumored tapes and stated that the details of the clips were “totally fabricated.”

So there are no semi-nude photos or video clips of Britney for sale. Wow. I wonder if Kitsons has Team Adnan and Team Osama shirts printed up yet. I’m going to have some made if not. Which shirt would you rock? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. For everyone who registers and comments, I’ll enter your name in a contest for your very own Team Adnan shirt. Or that other guy if you really choose him. And please people, regulate on the comments as this is a family friend blog. (Editors note: I laughed again after typing family friend blog)