Websites

TMZ suckered by fake JFK photo

jfknot.jpgEven if the creased, black-and-white picture of John F. Kennedy on a boat with naked skinnydippers were real, TMZ went more than a little overboard, calling it "the JFK photo that could have changed history." The site labeled their find "Exclusive" and went deep with experts authenticating the photo and IDing Kennedy with the naked women. None of which was true — it was a color photo from a Playboy shoot in 1967, four years after Kennedy's death. The Smoking Gun got the real scoop.

TMZ's skinback, Man in Photo is Not JFK, is much shorter than the original post and offers no explanation for how its experts, including two supposed JFK biographers, could be so wrong. "We’re not happy about it, but this is part of journalism,” Harvey Levin told the New York Times.

Fixed: Skinback, not skimback. I can never keep them straight.


More by Kevin Roderick:
Standing up to Harvey Weinstein
The Media
LA Times gets a top editor with nothing but questions
LA Observed Notes: Harvey Weinstein stripped bare
LA Observed Notes: Photos of the homeless, photos that found homes
Recent Websites stories on LA Observed:
Arianna Huffington is done with HuffPo
NYT's Michael Cieply named editor of Deadline
Mitra Kalita leaving LA Times for CNN
Memorial Day media notes: Moves, paywalls, Trump and more
LA School Report merges with Campbell Brown group, gets new editor
Serious kudos for the LA Review of Books
Grantland site killed by ESPN
BuzzFeed newsroom: 58% women and 68% white


 

LA Observed on Twitter