Parachini says he was fired because the court didn't like his openness

Allan Parachini was a rarity in the world of government affairs: He was helpful. That very quality appears to be the thing that did him in as PIO for the Los Angeles County court system. While accusing Parachini of leaking information to the celebrity-gossip site TMZ (which embarrasses celebrities), court officials seem to have been more concerned with Parachini's efforts to make public information available to the public (which has the potential to embarrass court officials), according to today's Los Angeles Times story.

Parachini got fired this week after eight years on the job. The Times story indicates that court officials got fed up with him after he failed to find excuses to drag his feet in turning over documents related to contracts, salaries and court spending - all of which are supposed to be public.

TMZ slips on own scoop*,**,***

This morning TMZ went live with what it claimed to be a damning photograph of John F. Kennedy, pre-presidency, relaxing on a yacht as four naked women frolicked nearby. From TMZ:

TMZ has obtained a never-before published photograph which appears to show John F. Kennedy on a boat filled with naked women -- it's a photo that could have altered world events.

It was, as the headline blared, "the photo that could have changed history."

Except that isn't JFK in the photo. After gaining assurances from this expert that photo was probably taken in the 1950s and showed no signs of being Photoshopped, and talking to JFK biographers who said the man in the photo looked a lot like JFK, TMZ later learned the picture was published in Playboy in 1967 - four years after JFK was assassinated.

Aside from the "too good to be true" nature of the photo, which should have caused TMZ to be more skeptical than usual, perhaps this line, from the original post, could have provided a hint that something about the photo's alleged provenance was fishy:

The photo was eventually given to a man who owned a car dealership on the East coast. The man kept it in a drawer for years, and would brag to friends he had an image of JFK on a boat with naked women. The man died 10 years ago and one of his sons inherited the photo.

So, after the Warren Commission investigation, decades of hardcore conspiracy nuts scouring every record for new evidence about a plot to kill JFK, and a raft of auctions that drove up the price on anything Kennedy ever sneeze on, a car dealer "on the East coast" somehow got hold of what is clearly a posed photo of a young JFK and his naked nymphs, and tucked it away in his desk, only to will it to his son? No names, no dates, no locales? No when, why or how?

*Update: And what's next for the purveyor of "unvarnished celebrity coverage"? Sports, according to the New York Times (via LA Observed). The story has TMZ founder Harvey Levin making noise about expanding further into Washington, DC.

**Update II: The Smoking Gun has more on the photo, which originally ran in color under the title "Charter Yacht Party." The man in the photo is "Andy," a paid model.

***Update III: A basic tenet of journalism is that you don't run story if you can't properly explain its origins. It's no coincidence then that TMZ got duped over a photo it could only vaguely tie to a nameless auto dealer from a nameless East coast town. And yet, Harvey Levin had this to say about getting hoodwinked: “We’re not happy about it, but this is part of journalism.”

Experts: L.A. sheriff flouts state's shield law

Investigators with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department appear to have overstepped their authority when they obtained phone records of TMZ founder Harvey Levin as part of a probe to figure out who leaked information about Mel Gibson's 2006 drunk driving arrest to the gossip site.

From the Los Angeles Times:

"That's illegal," said Lucy Dalglish, an attorney and executive director of the Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Most law enforcement agencies know it's illegal . . . or have a hard time getting a judge signing off on it."

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, himself a former journalist, said investigators went after the phone records only after a judge signed off on a search warrant. He told the Times:

"What we did we believe was legal."

But experts in media law questioned that assertion, saying that, in addition to First Amendment's free-press protections, California's constitution explicitly spells out rights for journalists. Again from the Times:

Legal experts said the California Constitution protects journalists from being forced to reveal their sources.

State law, they said, also bars judges from issuing search warrants for unpublished information that is gathered by reporters. ...

[District attorney's office spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons] noted that Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has a written policy on search warrants, which says they "cannot be used to obtain the source of any news information."

"He feels strongly about not infringing upon a reporter's rights," Gibbons said.

(Found via LA Observed)

Second hoax this week for HuffPo

For the second time in as many days, Huffington Post has published a hoax story on its website. In the latest example, caught here by Gawker, Huffington Post picked up a sarcastic story from CurbedNY about a ridiculous proposal to build an airport in New York's "blighted" Central Park. Gawker writes:

Combine HuffPo's hunger for traffic with its ugly habit of lifting content from other websites, and this is the amusing result; apparently the sarcasm in the original Curbed item was too subtle for the website's editors.

If the concept doesn't seem an obvious satire on its face, there's always the over-the-top website, which calls Central Park a "blighted urban space" that needs to be "reclaim[ed]" and assures that Tavern on the Green will "be given the option of applying for a franchisee lease in the concourse food court."

Huffington Post has since made note of the hoax on its website.

Yesterday, HuffPo followed TMZ and a few others in reporting that mixed martial arts fighter Kim "Kimo" Leopoldo had died. The story came as quite a surprise to the still-living Leopoldo.

TMZ's not so awesome scoop

TMZ got a lot of attention for being the first to report Michael Jackson had died, but I still waited for the Los Angeles Times to post something before I was completely sure of the story. Why? From yesterday's LA Observed:

TMZ threw its supposed standards out the window and mistakenly "confirmed" the death of mixed martial arts fighter Kim "Kimo" Leopoldo — based on web chatter. He's alive and well.

A couple other outlets posted the bad information, but TMZ seems to have simply covered over the mistake by redirecting the link that went to the false story.