From the NY Daily News’ Front Page, “The billionaire, the Post and the $220G shakedown: Page Six writer wanted $$$ to stop inaccurate coverage”:
A New York Post Page Six staffer solicited $220,000 from a high-profile billionaire in return for a year’s “protection” against inaccurate and unflattering items about him in the gossip page, the Daily News has learned.
In two 90-minute meetings, characterized by a shocking breach of ethics, Jared Paul Stern, a fixture on the city’s gossip scene who also edited Page Six The Magazine, asked for a series of payments from Ron Burkle, the managing partner of Yucaipa Cos., a conglomerate with interests in supermarkets, celebrity clothing lines, and media.
It was all a setup, a sting monitored by law enforcement, including the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI, who are now investigating the extortion attempt. The meetings, on March 22 and March 31, were videotaped.
The shakedown began with a series of e-mails sent last month by Stern to Burkle.
It reached a boiling point more than an hour into the first meeting after Stern outlined various ways Burkle could buy protection on the gossip page.
An exasperated Burkle finally said, “How much do you want?” after Stern said he could control coverage by Richard Johnson, the column’s chief writer, and his staff. “Um, $100,000 to get going and then you could get it to me on a month-to-month, maybe like $10,000,” replied Stern.
“Okay, that’s a great deal,” said Burkle, the subject of numerous Page Six items including a “date” with supermodel Gisele Bundchen, meetings with other women and a nasty breakup with a longtime lover.
Burkle had insisted to Page Six staffers and editors that the items were not true. Among the other false items is a Jan. 1 report that Burkle flew Tobey Maguire, girlfriend Jen Meyer and blonde actress Sarah Foster in his private jet to Aspen, Colo., where they “vacationed at Burkle’s mansion.”
Burkle does not own a mansion in Aspen, did not fly his private jet to Aspen, and didn’t vacation with Foster, Maguire or Meyer.
Last month, the column referred to Burkle, 53, as a “party-boy billionaire.”
On Monday, Stern, 36, e-mailed instructions to a designated Burkle employee for a $100,000 down payment to be wired to his New York City bank account, and during the week sent more e-mails wondering where his money was.
Burkle, of Beverly Hills and New York City, has a fortune estimated at $2.3 billion. He had “no comment” on the meetings with Stern, his spokesman Michael Sitrick said last night.
However, said Sitrick, “Both Burkle and his lawyers have repeatedly written and or told The Post’s attorneys, editors and management that the articles and items about him on Page Six are inaccurate but to no avail. I couldn’t understand what was going on.”
[…]
Stern, who began working for Page Six more than 10 years ago, is something of a dandy with his own Web site and clothing line.
He first met Burkle last summer when the entrepreneur bought about 60 T-shirts and gave them away to his friends, according to a source.
Stern’s reaction? “It’s completely outrageous.”
A denial I suspect he’ll be asked to take up with the videotapes being held by the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI.
That is, unless he has some dirt on those videotapes he’s planning on publishing. Who knows? Perhaps one of the tapes is married but has been rumored to frequent gay bars.
My advice to Stern? Call John Aravosis, STAT!
****
(h/t Bill INDC)
He asked then owner of the Kroger, Fred Meyer and Smith’s store chains for cash money, but didn’t demand that all of his stores stock the original, sugar (not corn syrup) sweetened Coca-Cola!?
The man’s priorities are all out of whack!
Too bad Stern isn’t an African-American Congresswoman, then he explain his actions by accusing Burkle of racism and blaming him for
“innapropriate taping”. Danny Glover and Harry Belfonte would then flock to his cause and blame Bush for creating a climate of divisiveness and ethnic hatred.
TW “wife”,as in: not as good as a donkey…..
Stern actually looks like the slimy prick that he’s accused of being.
T/W This neck tie is part of my Rod Roddy collection.
You know, this could shake my confidence in the veracity of the print media.
I think it is past time for someone to start writing the Attica State Penitentiary Gossip Column. I’ll start:
Everyone on cellblock F is buzzing about the knife fight Thursday between Gangster Disciple enforcer Thurmon “T Mon” Wallace and Aryan Brotherhood High Priest Lester Perry during the new arrival intitiation. It seems that both of them had taken a shine to former Page Six gossip columnist and obvious punk bitch Jared Paul Stern and wanted to have first crack at the fresh meat before his ass is sold around the cellblock for cigarretes, dope and other contraband. The joke was on them, however, as he was assigned to a cell with Latin Kings Top Dog Hector “el loco” Gomez. Word has it that when told by Hector to “toss his salad” the silly bitch started looking around for some vegetables. He’s not expected to survive.
The New York Post you say?
Hmm…that famously jingoistic paper where residing rightwing Israeli and British journalists like to pump up their pseudo-American nationalist feeling and bash “corrupt Gallic and German collaborators�
The <a href=”http://www.preventtruthdecay.com/mainmiscweasels.htm “ target=”_blank”>shamefully racist Feb 14, 2003 article </a>by Debbie Orin and Brian Blomquist will always be remembered as a high watermark of Pharisaic propaganda, an archetypical example of what cynical infomercialists and other corrupt media types subsidized by the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (a nest of Israeli-trained “Middle-East experts†as Seymour Hersh revealed in his powerful New Yorker articles) are willing to write for money:
The Mussolinian militarist choreography is impeccable: and the supreme leader’s macho “crispness†contrast quite nicely with the effeminate hesitations of these mellow Euro-pussies!
Never a bad time to be haten’ on the Jews eh doc?
a nest of Israeli-trained “Middle-East expertsâ€Â…
A Jewish conspiracy controlling the media? Who knew?
I am missing the point of the good doctor’s stirring quote. Not that I’m inviting an explanation. The N.Y.POST writers have more fun with the language than most and its a pleasure to read. IMHO.
Big E – I am in awe of that comment. Man, you got all of that one!
More please.
Guilty as charged, Vic!
(Dr Victorino de la Vega, proudly conforming reality to preconception since algore invented the internets.)
Doc, if you’re going to have your ‘bot puke your site’s feeble contents here so regularly—moldy links and all—at least have the courtesy of hanging the pw link in your esteemed blogs-you-“read” menu, k?
Gracias!
Memo to Jared Paul Stern:
People don’t get to be bazzillionaires through being outsmarted by prissy, self important socialite wannabe scum. People get to be bazzillionaires by plowing over people like you as if you’re just another pothole.
The Moral: Don’t fuck with incredibly rich people unless you’ve got both incriminating photos and an exit strategy.
tw: Do you come here often, boy?
Well…Actually PW has always been right there…in the « Amerikka » section as you should have guessed.
Plus it’s actually “numero uno†as they say on both sides of the Rio Grande, where we indolent brownies “speak Mexican fluently” as our leader supremo Jorge W famously said!
So famously, I’m requesting a link to verify Dr. Victorino Mengele’s assertion.
Cordially…
Someone–well OK, I will–should inform the good doctor V the the NYPost is read for its entertainment value. Their whole point of existence is to mock the uber-seriousness with which the NYTimes takes itself.
And I think it can be rightly stated that when the NYPost’s ethics problems surround its gossip pages, and the NYTimes ethics problems surround its news pages…well, the conclusions draw themselves.
No doubt, Pablo. Mr. Stern should be very grateful the gentleman went to the US attorneys office, as opposed to seeing Nunzio about a little ‘overtime’ pay.
word: all. “All your cement shoes belong to us.”
And upon actually reading the good doctor’s post, I think, without medical training, that he is in desperate need of lithium. Large doses. Applied via fire-hose.
word: step. “I’m not sure if there’s a twelve step program for what you got, doc, but I could see someone less scrupulous than me making a mint off publishing the book.”
Should have guessed? Shit no, Doc; I’m a bushitlerist without the grey matter God gave my progressive commenting superiors.
That kewl <<Funniest Patriarchal Jooish-Zionist Blogger>> thingie blew right past me like a Clinton perjury. Golly.
It must be all that time I have to go round clicking your stuff, you silly little threadwhore.
But gracias!
No wonder the NYT is going bankrupt. Their “giving protection away for free”. And as they say on the street “Girl you ain’t going to pay the rent giving it away.” So at least the NY Post has a better business model.
Wait, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans Mideast experts are Israeli-trained?
Hell, I should hope so.
TW: You think that’s a bad thing, don’t you?
Gah… I wish I had the smarts to be a billionaire. *Sigh*
Least I’m not a Koskid. Gives me at least ONE edge.
Golly?
Donald Rumsfeld is that you posting incognito under the 6Gun pseudo?
Guess that’s one of these despikably kovert OSP triks those of your ilk like to play!
Because of the ILKISM!!!!!!!!!
Hey, Vega, send me $100 US in small bills and I won’t tell anyone that you are really an anti-semite.
It’ll just be between you and me.
Mussolinian
Oooooh, first time I heard that. Learn something new every day!
Word. Vega-speak’s plummier stuff than Oscar Wilde after the sixth bottle of laudanum.
It’s the Pharisaic Mussolinians you have to look out for, nasty buggers there.
Don’t they have some sort of spray for those?
Why people read it I can’t say (I used to buy it because it cost a quarter and was good for killing time on a long subway ride). It is pretty entertaining in its way.
But it’s funny to see it singled out as a representative of the Evil MSM, since its editorial bias is so frankly conservative—or, to put it more accurately, so lustily jingoistic and warmongering.
But that’s Murdoch for ya—he’s a guy who stands for everything bad in media. No commitment to truth or objectivity. No interest in the public interest. Total dedication to pure profiteering. His agenda: Make more money. Hence his support of Bush, whose tax and media-deregulation policies are so friendly to a megarich tycoon like Rupert.
When Murdoch bought that paper, the staff ran a cover that featured Alex Hamilton (its founder) with a tear running down his face. And they were right. It became a complete snake pit. So its not surprising at all to see a slimy fixing scheme like this—the paper has no moral center whatsoever.
…the paper has no moral center whatsoever.
So the Post fits in perfectly with other NYC papers, you say?
Cordially…
His agenda: Make more money.
And this is bad how?
Beetroot, are you so disconnected from reality that when I say entertainment value, you respond by equating the NYPost with the evil MSM?
I guess that’s just to set up your straw man premise–as no one (ignoring Dr. V) addressed anything connecting the legal/ethics problem of a gossip reporter to that of the MSM at-large.
As regards Murdoch, why so much angst? Where’s the love?
“No commitment to truth or objectivity. No interest in the public interest. Total dedication to pure profiteering. His agenda: Make more money.”
Funny that: opinion stated as fact. Were’s the commitment to truth?
Then I suppose you can offer a basis for your unfounded allegations. And while you’re at it, explain who is to determine the public interest, if not the marketplace of free and unfettered competition?
In fact, you might explain what public interest you’re talking about, aside from that which states: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.”
Cheers
I see that Stern has retained the services of Eddie “I can get ya outta anything” Hayes, arguably the best criminal defense attorney in Manhattan. His recently released memoir Mouthpiece: A Life In and Sometimes Just Outside the Law is a terrific read. Check it out!
Hayes is the real life guy Tom Wolfe based the Tommy Killian (haay, waddaya waddaya) character on in Bonfire of the Vanities.
I can’t believe the heights of lunacy some go to.
Lunacy? Well, please prove my lunacy with a 100-word essay explaining/locating the NYT’s and Daily News’ “moral center.”
Not acceptable: “Pinch Sulzberger good/Rupert Murdoch bad”
Cordially…
Just compare the wedding announcement pages.