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NEW
YORK—Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and City Atty.
Rocky Delgadillo learned the hard way that decisions
involving Paris Hilton brought sharp scrutiny.
Her
23-day sentence—and the subsequent controversy over her
early release and reimprisonment—unwittingly exposed the
overcrowding of LA County jails. Now, in the latest
example of the odd alchemy worked by the socialite’s
celebrity, Hilton’s attempt to land a lucrative media
deal has unintentionally brought discomfiting attention
to a practice the networks would rather keep quiet:
their willingness to compensate subjects for exclusive
access.
On
Friday executives at ABC, NBC and CBS all said they were
no longer interested in interviewing the heiress after
details of a series of behind-the-scenes negotiations
with her family were made public, torpedoing Hilton’s
efforts to secure a major network venue for her first
postjail sit-down. The abrupt turnaround came after
intense jostling among the news divisions for an
exclusive.
Hilton’s
family triggered the scrutiny this week by telling ABC
that NBC was willing to pay close to $1 million for an
exclusive upon her release, a story NBC promptly
disavowed. But outrage built over the prospect that
Hilton could profit from her stint in jail for violating
terms of her probation for alcohol-related
reckless-driving charges.
A Hilton
spokesman later released a statement saying she was not
being compensated for any interviews.
Hilton
would not have been the first to profit from such an
arrangement. Television news divisions have long found
ways to woo prospective interview subjects without
paying them directly, whether through posh hotel suites,
Broadway show tickets or “licensing fees” for home
videos.
“It’s
the way that the networks have been doing business for
years,” said Joe Angotti, a former senior vice president
at NBC News. “It’s always bothered me, and it bothers me
more now that I’m out of the business. They feel that it
does not cross the line as long as they don’t write a
check. It’s a very fuzzy line, obviously.”
One
long-time network producer familiar with the booking
wars said most major broadcast interviews involved some
form of indirect compensation, such as first- or
business-class plane tickets, limousines and five-star
meals.
“It’s
all built around the idea of plausible deniability so
that extremely reputable journalists can say with a
straight face that they didn’t pay for the interview,”
said the producer, who did not want to be quoted by name
discussing internal practices. “It’s just seen as the
cost of doing business. And as the competition has
increased, there’s been a sense of, ‘What more can we do
to up the ante?’”
Network
executives defended their tactics, insisting that paying
to use personal footage or putting interview subjects up
in hotels did not amount to checkbook journalism.
“NBC
News doesn’t pay for interviews, period,” said Allison
Gollust, a spokesman for the news division. “There are
situations in any news story where the licensing of
material is part of the booking, but I think everyone
understands what is reasonable and what’s not.”
This
week ABC executives said they had lost their bid for an
exclusive with Hilton to Meredith Vieira, coanchor of
NBC’s Today show. Hilton’s camp indicated that
NBC had offered the family a better deal: a licensing
fee of $750,000 to $1 million for the use of personal
videos and photos, besting ABC’s offer of $100,000.
But when
word of the negotiations leaked out, NBC said it had no
commitment from Hilton and would not pay for an
interview. However, the network continued to negotiate
for a sit-down that did not include any form of payment,
according to an NBC source.
At the
same time, the jailed socialite and her
family—apparently fearful of losing a major network
interview altogether—frantically sought a deal with
ABC’s Barbara Walters.
The
lobbying took the form of a flurry of late-night phone
calls. Just before midnight Friday on the East Coast,
Hilton’s mother, Kathy Hilton, who is a friendly
acquaintance of the ABC host, called Walters at her home
and told her that the 26-year-old wanted to do the
interview with Walters, no strings attached.
Around 2
am, Walters received a call from Paris Hilton herself.
“She
expressed her regret that all kinds of negotiations
seemed to have gone outside her control and she only
wanted to do this with Barbara,” said an ABC executive
who did not want to be identified discussing internal
matters.
In the
morning, Walters received another message in her office
from Hilton’s father, Rick Hilton, reiterating the
family’s interest in having her do the story.
Irked by
the machinations, Walters and her producer, David Sloan,
decided against it.
Hours
later, NBC News—which had told Dateline employees
in its Burbank office to prepare for a possible
interview with Hilton after her expected release
Monday—also pulled out of contention. Late Friday
afternoon, Gollust said network executives had informed
Hilton’s camp that NBC was no longer interested. CBS
News took the same stance.
The
socialite still could find a platform with a cable
personality like CNN’s Larry King. Christa
Robinson, a spokesman for the news channel, had no
comment on whether it was trying to book Hilton, but she
emphasized that the network did not pay for interviews.
Rival Fox News said it was not in formal talks with
Hilton, but did not preclude doing a sit-down.
If all
fails, there’s at least one interviewer who’s apparently
still interested in Hilton: Ryan Seacrest, who
interviewed the heiress from jail Thursday via phone
for E! News. No compensation was involved, he said.
“I just
realize that the media used me to make fun of and be
mean about it,” Hilton told Seacrest, saying that she is
“frankly sick of it, and I want to use my fame in a good
way.”
“I think
that God makes everything happen for a reason, and this
is my time to figure out what my purpose is in life,”
she said. |
