05.04.06
Page Six: LAT Drops the Ball on Pellicano Reporting
This week’s award in the Anthony Pellicano fest goes to Page Six of the New York Post so far. Page Six reporters slammed the Los Angeles Times for their feeble coverage of the Pellicano investigation as only Page Six can.
THE Los Angeles Times has never been known for aggressive coverage of Hollywood’s dirty laundry, but its out-to-lunch performance in the Anthony Pellicano case has Tinseltown folks scratching their heads. The paper has been scooped regularly in its own back yard by the New York Times. “This is the biggest scandal in the history of the entertainment business, and the L.A. Times has completely dropped the ball,” said an insider. “Is it just that they are lame, or have important people leaned on them to lay off?” Private eye Pellicano was arrested in 2002 after FBI agents raided his office and found explosives in his safe. The feds also confiscated a huge cache of illegal wiretaps, which has led to the indictment of 14 others. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood have been questioned and may face charges. The N.Y. Times, which has been leaked transcripts of FBI interviews, has detailed Pellicano’s relationships with CAA founder Michael Ovitz, lawyers Bert Fields and Dennis Wasser, Paramount boss Brad Grey and Universal chief Ron Meyer. The L.A. Times hasn’t broken any stories. There was a rumor the paper was hamstrung because it had a relationship with Pellicano, but a spokesman told us, “The Los Angeles Times has never hired Anthony Pellicano.”
The LAT had previously denied hiring Pellicano to Nikki Finke. Actually that only partially answers one of the many questions about the relationship the newspaper and their reporters had over the years with Pellicano. It is true that nearly everyone here in Tinseltown now is denying they were EVER anything but poor victims of the gumshoe, and of course we believe all of them. Credit must be given to supermarket billionaire Ronald W. Burkle’s legal team for being the first to come up with the victim shtick and the beautifully Christian variation on the forgiveness theme that Burkle demonstrated by showering gifts and special favors on Pellicano after Pellicano had threatened to investigate him for his rival in crime, Michael Ovitz.
Did the LAT perhaps have one of those mutually beneficial deals with the incarcerated P.I. in the vein of Burkle? Were gifts and favors exchanged between the LAT and Pellicano in exchange for certain services? Did Pellicano have a strong presence in decision making about what stories the newspaper would ultimately give coverage? In exchange, had Pellicano provided certain scoops on other juicy items and a special venue with some very important people in the biz who controlled the LAT’s prized advertisers?
Perhaps the newspaper’s final exculpatory statement will be more along the thinking of Cigarette Man from the X-Files, “We never, ever hired Anthony Pellicano, we only kept our friends close, and our enemies closer.” Nope, for that novel line of defense to work successfully the LAT still would have to acknowledge just how close they had really been with Pellicano in the past, so they’ll most likely go on denying that anything ever happened for the time being. Is all this starting to bring back fond memories of Bill Clinton’s famous discourse about what the ‘meaning of “is” really is’ right about now to anyone else here?
