This article The strange case of the writer landing A-lister interviews for local magazines about another murky corner of journalism is fascinating but ultimately unsatisfying and unsatisfactory.
It's pitched as a "strange case" piece because ultimately the hacks writing it, or their editors and lawyers, don't feel they can quite nail down the deception at which they are hinting.
But the big problem, in a story that is basically about transparency and whether hacks can be held accountable for claiming that someone said something, is that it is crying out for someone to say something on the record.
Instead, we get...
sources close to the would-be PM said
sources close to the stars involved said
Some people the Guardian spoke to
The Guardian understands
The Guardian understands
the Guardian understands
sources close to the stars say
The Guardian understands
Bizarrely, the hacks claim that:
Following the trail of how journalists source their stories is, by necessity, a tricky business. Reporters do not reveal their sources as a point of principle, and when asked multiple times to confirm how he had landed these interviews, Bale declined.
It is clear that in the world of showbiz journalism, there are many ways to do business. There are, undoubtedly, agents, managers and sources who will brief on behalf of their high-profile clients in a way that can be spun up into interviews.
There's that word again, "sources".
That hacks are taking quotes from PRs and attributing them to people they have never spoken to is one of journalism's dirty little secrets. If it is subject to a weird omerta, it's just another way the public gets misled.
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