Beyonce never saw it coming. 

TMZ broke one of the biggest entertainment stories of the year when it released security footage of Solange Knowles attacking Jay-Z in a hotel elevator. Within seconds, a family that prided itself on poise and secrecy showed very public cracks in the facade. 

The New York Post reported soon after that TMZ paid a hotel employee $250,000 for the video. While this was no surprise to those who’d watched the once nascent organization grow into a full-fledged empire, many observers were shocked. 

The practice of paying sources for content is a contentious topic among journalists and media ethicists. 

This is commonly known as checkbook journalism. While TMZ is consistently first and factual in its reporting, it’s a leader in this pay-to-play field, and has a sleazy reputation nearly industry-wide.

TMZ founder Harvey Levin, however, is having none of it.

“Fox News Channel pays for video. And so does ABC, and so does NBC, and so does CNN, and so does every news operation in America. Newspapers, too”, he said in a recent interview with Fox News. “Absolutely we will pay for video and photos. It’s just we’re being a little more honest than you guys”. 

Indeed, many news outlets routinely pay for content. Third-party vendors help journalists get what they need in a pinch.

Maybe that’s not ok.

“That’s what’s commonly known in the ethics sphere as the ‘everybody does it defense’”, says Jim Lichtman, a long-time writer and speaker on ethics. “If everybody else is doing it, and I’m not doing it so badly, what could be the harm? The harm is your own reputation”.

Lichtman sees an inherent conflict of interest in paying for any information, even in video or audio form. He believes it incentivizes both journalists and their sources to report inaccurately.

“Can we trust the information that’s being paid for? I would say, you just don’t know”.

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate at Student Press Law Center takes a more nuanced approach. “Paying for content is only really problematic at TMZ in that they don’t really disclose what they’re paying”, he explained. “I think my impression of a story would change if I knew that the person who leaked the video got paid two-hundred thousand instead of two-hundred”. 

Goldstein also points out that TMZ didn’t create this business model.  He says The National Enquirer was for a long time the leader in the celebrity-gossip-for-money game. Initially they would fabricate stories and end up spending a ton of money defending themselves from libel lawsuits. 

“[The National Enquirer] said, what if we took the money that we used to spend on these settlements, and we actually just bought actual stories about celebrities from people who might know something?” Goldstein said. By going legit and paying people for accurate content, they were able to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the John Edwards scandal, among others. 

“Harvey Levin’s kind of taken that to the next level”. 

Not much more is known about TMZ’s business model. No one knows how much they get paid for ads, how many page views they get, how much photographers get paid, or even who works for TMZ to begin with (outside of the folks on their TV Show). They’ve got moles in hair salons, gyms, and tons of other places frequented by celebrities.

The staff’s sworn secrecy is what allows them to move so aggressively. If an amateur wants to sell a video to TMZ, that amateur has very little bargaining power because they have no idea how much the last guy got paid for similar content.

TMZ also can’t be completely vilified. In fact, their skills at breaking newsworthy stories and putting pressure on public figures has gotten them a spate of glowing press.

Miki Turner, a USC professor and longtime entertainment and sports news producer, believes TMZ has triggered a seismic shift in how news is covered.  “They’re such an established brand that they’re the New York Times of tabloid coverage”, she said.  

“The fact that they’ve never been wrong and that they’ve broken major stories like Michael Jackson and Donald Sterling and Ray Rice…they’ve put some major stuff out there”.

TMZ’s major strength is its reliance on videos, photographs, and audio. Forensic analysis isn’t terribly difficult to do, and so long as they’re able to do a bit of corroborating, the images and sounds speak for themselves. 

Paying for videos would seem much less egregious, then, than paying for an interview. The interviewee then has a reason to tell you what you want to hear. With video, photos and data, the risk of this material being falsified is much lower.

Levin, a former lawyer, is quick to point out that TMZ aggressively vets everything they publish. Fred Brown, ethics writer for The Society of Professional Journalists, isn’t sure that holds water.

“People might be encouraged to create something they think they can sell”, he said. Brown likened paying for videos to controversies surrounding the MTV show Jackass, when amateurs started trying to one up the show’s dangerous stunts, in turn putting themselves in danger, all in an effort to make a bit of money.

He’s quick to point out that he knows more and more news outlets are coming to accept the fact that paying for videos “may be the coming thing”, but “that doesn’t make it right”.

Contact Staff Reporter Jonathan Tolliver here and here