The three-man staff at the Smoking Gun had been crashing on the story well into the wee hours Wednesday night and then through the day Thursday–scrambling to review, scan and post hundreds of pages of what the Web site said was grand jury testimony from the Michael Jackson child-molestation case.
“We need a back room full of monkeys to put all this stuff up there,” said William Bastone, co-founder and editor of the New York-based news outlet. “We are not called on very often to process this much stuff.”
Tired but ebullient, the Smoking Gun’s operators appeared, once again, to have scooped the nation’s biggest media outlets–and plenty of tabloid competitors–by obtaining and publishing much of a 1,903-page document that had been sealed by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville.
Repeatedly over the last eight years, the tart, celebrity-centric Web site–thesmokinggun.com–has found and posted original documents about the missteps of the rich and famous.
The Web site’s targets have routinely been angered but unable to dent the credibility of the reports.
Many of the revelations, however, have challenged mainstream media outlets, whose news managers must decide whether to republish the information.
On Thursday, editors at the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune were among those who decided not to run accounts of the purported grand jury testimony. Neither newspaper could confirm that the transcript on the Web site matched that on file in Santa Barbara County Superior Court. The Associated Press, which supplies stories used by many newspapers and broadcast outlets, took a similar position.
Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday after a break called when Jackson, 46, fell ill.
Jackson’s attorneys have bemoaned earlier leaks of grand jury information to the Smoking Gun and ABC News, noting that the defense is not present during grand jury hearings and witnesses before the panel did not face cross-examination.
Media advocates argued that Thursday’s postings showed the need for more openness in the Jackson case, in which virtually all documents have been sealed and participants have been ordered not to speak publicly.
“This is one of the great fallacies of these gag and sealing orders,” said Kelli Sager, a lawyer for many media organizations, including the Los Angeles Times. “Pieces of information inevitably get leaked, but the public doesn’t get the whole picture or know for sure whether the documents are real.”
The Smoking Gun’s Jackson reports have been a mixed bag for the singer.
A 2003 posting provided fresh details of molestation accusations that had arisen a decade earlier. But the site also posted findings from the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services that those charges against Jackson could not be substantiated.
Bastone said he and fellow employees did not hesitate to post the new document once they confirmed its authenticity.
“This is a very famous guy charged with a heinous crime,” Bastone said. “And nobody really knows anything about the charges. Certainly you could make an argument about the public’s right to know. How is Michael Jackson being treated by the criminal justice system, and were the charges ginned up against him or are they legitimate?”
