Informed Speculation

How devoid of integrity is entertainment reporting?

This is a shallow story for a shallow culture, but it epitomizes so much that is wrong with modern media that I can’t let it pass without comment.

Britney Spears has been, in case you live under a rock, partying like it’s 1999 since the breakup of her marriage.  She’s spent a lot of time at the Pure nightclub in Caesar’s Palace with her newest best bud Paris Hilton, and she’s been drinking at a Hemingwayian pace.  And, unsurprisingly, she’s made a complete ass of herself.

On New Year’s Eve, she passed out drunk at the club, from all accounts, such as this one:

Britney Spears has been rushed from a New Years Eve party after collapsing on the floor of a Las Vegas nightclub.

Eye-witnesses reported seeing the pop star downing glasses of Dom Perignon champagne before she fainted.

On-lookers claimed a hoard of bouncers covered the star in a blanket before carrying her out of Pure nightclub, where she had been hosting a party to bring in 2007.

That’s all unremarkable and pedestrian; who cares, really? But then Britney’s publicist got busy, and we were treated to the following AP story, which is running worldwide:

Britney Spears finally appears to be acting like a new mom. The pop princess, who recently made headlines for a rash of less-than-motherly hard partying, fell asleep in a Las Vegas nightclub early Monday shortly after leading the New Year’s Eve countdown, her manager said.

“By about one o’clock, she was just done, so we took her out,” Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, told The Associated Press Monday. “She was not drunk. She was just tired and falling asleep.”

Rudolph denied reports circulating on gossip Web sites that Spears, 25, collapsed shortly after midnight and was carried out by bodyguards. The star was hired to host the festivities at Ceasars Palace’s PURE nightclub.

Rudolph said Spears walked out of the club and did not seek medical attention.

“There is nothing out of the ordinary here,” he said.

The Washington Post runs the article under the headline “Spears Falls Asleep In Vegas Nightclub“.  Not “Manager Claims…” but simply a statement of fact.

Now, again, this is a very small story, but who believes that?  Nothing out of the ordinary about passing out on the floor of a club where you’ve been witnessed tossing back champagne moments before? Just fell asleep, that’s all?

Bull…and though the story has no import, the fact that self-serving crap fed by Spears’ own entourage is going out worldwide as ‘fact’ via the Associated Press is, if not scandalous, then at least indicative of why so many have lost faith in the integrity of old media.

We expect Vanity Fair and People and Vogue and other starstruck publications to unquestionably play the role of hack and regurgitate fawning pablum spoonfed by publicists as if it had ‘news value’, but the AP?  I’m thinking of giving out my fax number to every publicist in the entertainment business and becoming an entertainment ‘reporter’…