On a post this morning about Martin Luther King of all people, TMZ claimed an "Exclusive" (though, once they poached the documents, they changed it simply to "Breaking News"):

Note the time stamp. And then look at the post time on this story, with documents, from CN. It's almost a full three hours earlier:

If you look, you find examples like this over and over again. In fact it just happened again while I was writing this! (As our tipster ominously said it would...)

I mean, look, stealing things from other websites is nothing new. It happens allll the time. But this is just embarrassingly egregious. Putting the watermark on the public documents is really the kicker. We'd wager a guess that the TMZers aren't really doing the, you know, reporting of getting those on their own. I mean, they're not exactly The Smoking Gun.

Keep on rockin', Harvey.

Internet voyeurism felt relatively harmless when the objects of attention suffered little for being the object of any particular video or picture, and when they were more uniformly self-selected. Gun camera footage, when it becomes widespread and, inevitably, hugely popular, is going to raise far uglier questions.

Excerpt of WCBS' video report on the technology (with no disturbing footage of anyone getting shot):

[WCBS]

[via TMZ]

Unsurprisingly, this perpetually misogynistic website uses mostly women in the gallery, although they throw in a few men like Mickey Rourke to pretend to even the score. The one saving grace is that by the time you get to page 2, TMZ no longer bothers with their moronic commentary.

Listen, we agree that Chelsea Handler is probably not 33. Who's kidding who here? Fergie looks older as well, mostly because she has meth face. But taking cheap shots at the physical appearance of teens like Ali Lohan, 14, Riley Keough, 18, and Miley Cyrus, 15, is unnecessary and crass. Most offensively, it's not funny. Painfully unfunny.

While we're on the subject of the painfully unfunny, hear this, TMZ! We caught some of your show TMZ TV when it first ushered in the end of times. With the exception of the one hot guy you clearly just hired for the show, most of the staff has what is called a "face for blogging." You're the last people on earth who should be calling other people out for looking busted. Unlike you guys, however, we're not going to name names because that would require us to actually learn your names. Which would require us to watch the show again.

A sample of TMZ's "hilarious" commentary below...

Instead of simply saying "that was dumb, we're sorry," they ran another post that included a poll. If 51% of readers said the line should go, they'd pull it. Almost 100,000 people voted and a resounding 78% wanted it gone. So, they got rid of the offending bit and continued on their merry way. Without ever issuing a measly apology. The woman died two days ago for chrissake. I'm all for an off-color joke, but a little human decency never hurt anyone. [Tabloid Baby]

You know what's funny about TMZ? No, I'm... uh, I'm actually asking. The site is so screechy and repugnant that I always have to click away before I can remember to look for anything remotely amusing. The way they eagerly roll around in pop shit and gleefully smear it everywhere, because it's so campy and naughty, reminds me of the dumb queens from high school and their haggish friends who would shriek and think they were hysterical because they said "cum dumpster." I can find nothing entertaining or redeeming in any of the site's content. It's all just base and poorly written and arbitrarily amoral. I'm just as complicit in the whole awful celebrity-industrial complex as they are, but good god let's try to have a little style while we ruin people's lives, eh? Shut this thing down, please. Oh, and the wretched TV show too. There is no reason to see and hear Harvey Levin and his army of smug little shits every goddamn day.

So, are readers finally tiring of the torrent of shallow news about no-name celebrities, as Salon believes? The reasons for the abrupt decision are more prosaic, and depressing. Pagesix.com experienced its first day with more than 1m pageviews, last week, when the site published a gallery of photographs of Eliot Spitzer's hooker, Ashley Alexandra Dupré. But it was not making sufficiently rapid inroads into a market dominated by Time Warner's TMZ, and gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton. But the decision to shutter the spinoff gossip site likely owes even more to the Australian media mogul's pessimism about the US economy, and advertising spending.

Murdoch, disclosing a slowdown in ad revenue at his Fox television stations and newspapers, has predicted a "temporary downturn for a year or so." Other media companies, such as the New York Times, are also suffering from the advertising downturn, and have cut costs by making piecemeal layoffs.

The News Corporation boss, who has funded a decade of losses at his tabloid, the New York Post, is typically a patient investor. But he can also be decisive. He will be wary of overstretching the company, particularly after stretching to acquire the Wall Street Journal. During the last big advertising downturn, Murdoch nearly lost control of his company.

Anyway, before competitors gloat at News Corporation's reverse, they should remember this: if advertising spending has indeed turned down, the downturn will not spare web sites. The web's boosters hope that newly cost-conscious marketers will simply redirect their budgets from print and television to the web; that was the hope during the last recession, and it was wishful thinking, then and now. Murdoch will be embarrassed for a day; other media groups will be subsidizing loss-making websites for months before they come to the same conclusion.

Michael Sands, Sam Lutfi's spokesman, exclusively tells us that "Internet tabloid gossip Web sites need to stop reporting bogus stories without knowing the truth. They need to stop brainwashing the public."

..... Reported PageSix.com.

Bonus hilarious quote:

Follow-up calls to the LAPD Media Relations department were answered by Officer Lee, who said, "Who would you believe? The LAPD or Internet reports?"

• "Monday, 7:30 p.m. — Levin calls one of the Spears family's countless court dates 'maybe the biggest hearing ever.' Take that, Roe v. Wade!"
• "Monday, 7:52 p.m. — Sharon Stone, Marcia Cross, Juliette Lewis and, I swear to God, Cheech Marin are asked what they think of Britney."
• "Thursday, 7:37 p.m. — Amy Winehouse is 'crack-tabulous.' Zing! Drug addiction is a hoot."
• "Thursday; 7:43 p.m. — Donald Trump is asked what he thinks of Britney."
• "Friday, 7:39 p.m. — The Rolling Stones look like Mount Rushmore. Get it? They're old. Like Larry King."

• "It's a huge issue, especially with Britney Spears. Her parents are seriously worried that they're going to have to call the coroner soon. And those aren't my words. She has multiple personalities.... It's outrageous that they [U.C.L.A.] would let her go. The paparazzi haven't helped her. We give our cameramen explicit instructions. They're not allowed to chase, break the law, or go on private property."
• "I said, 'we're gonna cover Britney Spears the way David Gregory [NBC News Chief White House Correspondent) covers President Bush.'"
• "I just read a book about Einstein."

[Radar]

But will the TMZ "reporters" and publishers, begin to seel their own TV celebrity make them fair fodder for gossip entertainment TV? Presumably they all have personal lives complete with alcohol consumption, love affairs, break-ups. driving violations, etc. We need a new website that covers the gossip on entertainment reporters iReportTMZ.com might work...."

When your favorite famous black person gets arrested, PageSix.com will be there.

"When people wake up, PageSix.com will be the place they'll go to find out who hooked up at the clubs and what their favorite celebrity athlete is planning to say at his 10 a.m. arraignment. Simply put, PageSix.com is going to be the celebrity gossip addict's ultimate fix — morning, noon and night," said Chris Shaw, Vice President of Digital Media for PageSix.com.

And the site looks great (in Internet Explorer), with photos and videos almost-but-not-quite identical to the content on TMZ and OK! and UsWeekly, plus the items from the print column available in convenient "blog post" form.

Now we'll just wait for the inevitable cellphone-captured celebrity racist rant that will catapult PageSix.com to true web success.

PageSix.com

Click to enlarge.