I’ve been reading news stories about the way Entertainment Tonight ran a story about Angelina Jolie giving birth to twins despite allegedly knowing that their “source” was a fake. According to various AP reports out there, ET supposedly got news of the “birth” from someone posing as Jolie’s assistant Holly Goline, and then refused to retract the story even after Brad Pitt’s manager specifically denied that Jolie had given birth.
Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is here. Entertainment Tonight isn’t exactly a hard-hitting news program, is it? It’s like an on-air tabloid. Think of all the rumors and stuff floating around in the average tabloid…. how much of that stuff is fake or inaccurate? Probably a higher percentage than editors would care to admit. So to hear that the ET report was wrong was not that surprising to me. Given all the furor surrounding this, however, I guess it’s safe to say that I’m in the minority opinion here.
At any rate, can you imagine the stress celebs must go through trying to figure out which of their “friends” is actually a source for a tabloid? Jolie is probably sitting in her new mansion in the south of France, going through her list of all the people she sent baby shower invitations to, and internally debating whether or not those people might have talked to ET. How do celebs ever figure out whom to trust?