It’s A Fine Line Between Making Your Case In The Court Of Public Opinion And Self Promotion
Every major legal battle that receives a lot of attention in the press - especially the Hollywood press - ends up creating momentary celebrities of some of the case’s participants. Remember Kato Kaelin? Gavin Arvizo? Billy McFarland? These were people who, for a brief moment in time, were familiar names in Hollywood circles and recipients of an abnormal amount of attention from the entertainment press.
If you have to designate someone to be the Robert Kardashian of the battle to stop the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, you’d have to pick California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who in recent weeks has been interviewed by every major news outlet and media reporter.
If David Ellison and other Paramount executives have relied on some friendly reporters to pass along their talking points, Bonta has aggressively made his case in public. Pushing back on stories generated by Paramount and arguing that he and the other 11 states that filed the lawsuit to stop the merger aren’t in any hurry to settle the case.
Yes, you might have forgotten as Team Bonta continues to make its case. Still, while California is the lead plaintiff in the case, eleven other state AGs are also part of the proceedings: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.
And while I tend to agree with their take on the facts of the case, I am already weary of Bonta’s interviews, in which he says things. But nothing that actually reveals what he and the other AGs might be looking for from Paramount.
I have been writing extensively about the case and didn’t want to hear from Bonta, because you can read his POV in a dozen other outlets. So I decided to start reaching out to other participating state AG offices to see if I could get some sort of a unique perspective on the case.
What I found was that while some of the AGs had their own opinions about how this case should be battled out in public, no one was willing to go on the record. No one wants to take the chance of muddying the arguments against Paramount. And there is also a fear that any perception that the various AGs might not be in lockstep would be used by the Paramount side as a way to try and drive a wedge between the various states.
“Do I wish he would sometimes sound less like a Hollywood agent and more like a serious litigator?” one AG told me earlier this week. “Sure, but I can suck it up if it means we can win this case and either block this merger or face substantial concessions.”
One assistant state AG who asked not to be identified told me their boss has often expressed the concern that Bonta has drunk a bit too much of his own Kool-Aid. But that was a complaint which centered more on optics than the facts of the case.
In fact, I managed to speak on background to about a third of the state attorney generals’ or a high-ranking member of their staff, and the consensus was that they would be happy if Bonta was willing to spend a bit less time speaking with the press.
“Someone needs to be making our case to the public,” one AG told me in a Signal message. “But it doesn’t always have to be Rob. There are times when I think he’s also angling to be on the next season of Dancing With Stars, and that has become a distraction,” I was told. “Take a breath, suggest reporters talk to someone else. We can win this case, but only if we stayed focused on the case and not on brand management.”
I reached out to Bonta’s office for comment, but have not yet received a response.
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Every Independent Journalist Has Had This Experience
While the public tends to think of all journalists as being part of some club where everyone treats each other with respect and acknowledges the good work published by rivals, the truth is not nearly that rosy.
If you are an independent journalist, it’s not uncommon to write a story and then find it lightly rewritten by someone at a larger publication, without them attributing your work or admitting that their story wouldn’t exist without your work.
In the Hollywood Press, the Penske Media-owned outlets are notoriously reluctant to provide credit to independent journalists. And when they do, at best they’ll add a mention at the end of their story along the lines of “This story was originally reported by X publication,” but without a link to the original coverage.
The situation is even grimmer when it comes to major national outlets such as the NY Times and the Washington Post, where journalists have been to known to “uncover” a good story somewhere else, and use their large audience size to essentially steal interest in the story, without proper attribution.
On July 8th, the site Fansplaining posted a really fascinating piece entitled “Heated Rivalry is at the Center of Fanfic’s AI Reckoning.” It was a deep dive on a controversy going on in the fan fiction ranks of Heated Rivalry fans: should writers acknowledge when their fan fiction was written by A.I.?
Many of today’s fandom meltdowns feel much like the ones of the past, just hyper-scaled to match the size and pace of modern online life. But the latest blow up in the Heated Rivalry fandom feels like something new. Conflict has always been a part of online fandom, but generative AI destabilizes fandom at its core by destabilizing the entire idea of community. On an internet in which it is increasingly difficult to determine if the words in the fic you're reading, or the comments on the fic, were even human, what’s left? If we can’t figure out collective ways to mediate the threat AI poses, then fandom’s function as a digital space where we gather to connect and share is at risk of being destroyed.
When a very similar piece appeared in the NY Times on July 30th, it certainly raised some questions at Fansplaining. Especially when the outlet had proof that Emmy Martin, who wrote the NY Times piece, had at the very least read the Fansplaining piece:
On July 20th, someone at the New York Times used their work email when they purchased access to our July 8th feature, “Heated Rivalry is at the Center of Fanfic’s AI Reckoning” by Kayti Burt. One of Fansplaining’s editors, Aja Romano, noticed the Times email address, too, and posted about it in Slack. “Keep an eye out for a story on this broader issue with unattributed reporting,” I joked in reply. Aja reacted to my comment with the melting emoji.
I was only sort of joking. I’ve worked in the media industry for two decades now, at institutions large and small. I’m fully aware of which publications tend to take without asking, and what it feels like when it happens. Sometimes the beats are the same, or the sources are adjacent: parallel articles that feel like sisters. Typically, this borrowing is subtle; you’ll have no hard proof. That was partly why a Times reporter using a work address to buy our piece struck me as odd. I sincerely wondered if we’d be getting an email in the coming days asking for an interview. I’d have happily spoken to the Times on a fanfiction-related topic—as I’ve done in the past—or directed them to Kayti, who’d done all the hard work on this particular story.
No email came, but a week and a half later, I got my answer: on July 30th, the Times published a story titled “When A.I. Invaded ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fan Fiction, the Meltdown Was Epic.” The author was tech reporter Emmy Martin, a name I was familiar with—she had, after all, used her work email to buy access to our piece.
I highly recommend reading the entire extensive piece on this issue at Fansplaining. It’s a great outlet and from what I can tell, they have a legitimate reason to be irritated. And if you think this a rare issue, the Fansplaining piece adds this additional example:
The imbalance between big and little guys has only grown in recent years. While many indie journalists don’t want to go public for fear of cutting off future hiring prospects, some have been vocal about the way legacy outlets, to use Hill’s term, “piggyback” off smaller orgs. After giants like the Times, the Washington Post, and CBS News referenced her reporting on Rwandan refugees without naming or linking to her, The Handbasket’s Marisa Kabas wrote, “Hi, it’s me. I’m the independent journalist. And a multi-billion dollar news corporation couldn’t be bothered to write my damn name.” In a Splinter article about the incident as part of a broader pattern, Jacob Weindling wrote, “It’s very difficult to see how CBS and the New York Times’ ‘reports’ are anything other than a conscious decision to erase the original report because it comes from a source they clearly don’t respect and/or see as a threat.”
This has happened to me on a number of occasions, and it’s frustrating for several reasons. It’s infuriating because the piece from the larger outlet is the one that ends up receiving the majority of the attention and the aggregation from other outlets. But it’s also frustrating because of the level of arrogance exhibited by some of their reporters and editors when I nicely suggest they provide a mention of my original reporting.
Odds & Sods
Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported a significant surge in Netflix app usage following the reveal of Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look.
CNN apologized after using a photo of a Las Vegas Dolly Parton impersonator during coverage of her death.
Someone has uploaded the pilot for the short-lived 1998 USA Network comedy Claude’s Crib, which is…not good.
Canadian voice actor Peter Cullen has died at age 85. He starred as the heroic Optimus Prime in a large number of Transformers films, TV shows and video games and as the Eeyore in dozens of Winnie the Pooh projects.
A text version of the interview is coming soon, but here is the video of a conversation I recently had with voice actress Madeleine Morris, who talked about voicing the character “Rudeus” on Crunchyroll’s Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation.
The View’s Sunny Hostin has licensed her name and likeness to an A.I. startup.
Hulu has renewed Furious for a second season.
Paramount+ has renewed BET+’s Zatima for a sixth season, Tyler Perry’s Divorced Sisters for a third season, The Black Hamptons has been renewed for a third season and The Family Business for season seven.
Remembering Dolly: A Rhinestone Life will air on CBS Sunday at 8:00 pm. It will be hosted by Entertainment Tonight’s Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner.
The Anthony Bourdain animated series Get Jiro premieres Saturday, October 3rd on Adult Swim.
Everyone Who Has Ever Worked In Show Biz Has A Few Good Stories To Tell At Parties
My recent mention of the Rappin’ Rodney video garnered a number of stories from readers. Including these pieces from Jonathan Hart, whose book Unfortunately, I Was Available is filled with stories of odd and sometimes brief encounters with actors, musicians and other show biz types:
My Hellish "Billions" Poker Marathon (Part 1) - The Sports Column | Sports Articles, Analysis, News and Media
His stories reminded me of one of my favorite stories from my stand-up days. And it explains why I have never much cared for Arsenio Hall.
I’m not sure of the year - I am guessing it was sometime in the very early 80s - I was working regularly at the few comedy clubs in the Chicagoland area. My favorite place was Comedy Cottage in Rosemount, which is near O’Hare. The place used to be a drive-in restaurant and when the owner decided to turn it into a club, he just threw plywood panels on the wall to cover the huge windows inside and out. So when the small (80 seat) club was packed, the entire building would shake when the audience was laughing.
Arsenio Hall was one of the top acts working there. He had moved to Chicago from maybe Cleveland? and was obviously a star in the making. Great stage presence and had the ability to wring huge laughs out of a mediocre punchline. But he wasn’t great when it came to actually writing jokes.
He had the chance to open for Nancy Wilson at a local club and he did some other dates with her. Which I believe is how he got his first national TV exposure, on a music show called Solid Gold.
All the other comics in Chicago tuned in and quickly realized that a substantial part of that performance was a long, extended piece that was well-known to all of us as having been written and performed by a local comic name John Tamborino.
John was a Chicago city garbage man by day. And while his act was fine, that bit was by far his showcase set of jokes. And Arsenio just went on national television and ensured he could never do those jokes again without someone claiming he had stolen them from Arsenio.
When Arsenio returned to Chicago, the club owner arranged a meeting between Arsenio, John and a number of other comics. It went as well as you might expect, and I will never forget Arsenio eventually just told John and the other comics that it was done. “In five years, I’ll be a star and you’ll still be slinging trash.”
The fact that his prediction came true was beside the point. It was a dick move and while I am sure Arsenio is a fine fellow now, I’ve never been able to stand him since.
What’s Coming Tonight And Tomorrow
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27TH, 2026:
Adults Season Two Premiere (FXX)
Leanne Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
Miss USA 75th Diamond Celebration (The CW)
The Undeclared War (Peacock)
Tyler Perry’s Back In Black Season Three Premiere (Netflix)
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28TH, 2026:
All The Truth In My Lies Series Premiere (Netflix)
Alpha (Netflix)
Betty la Fea: The Story Continues (Prime Video)
Chumbak Series Premiere (Netflix)
Dark Matter Season Two Premiere (Apple TV)
Graveyard (Netflix)
Mousetrap Series Premiere (Netflix)
Penny Lane Is Dead (Shudder)
The Producer Series Premiere (HBO Max)
The Secret Woman (Netflix)
The Whisper Man (Netflix)
The Wrong Housemaid (LMN)