TMZ falls for hoax

TMZ.com received a lot of attention and some praise — including from me — for scooping the rest of the media on the cardiac arrest and later death of Michael Jackson. But today, 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. The TMZ post has been pulled and the link redirected, but the gaffe is not fessed up on the site, that I can find. The Orange County Register and other media also fell for the hoax, says an L.A. Times story and Yahoo.