Anyone who's visited TMZ the last few months knows the site has become Paris Hilton's new official Internet publicity arm. And if you saw Harvey Levin on TV during Paris's time in jail you know that the TMZ editor-in-chief has become her personal bitch. How did this happen though? Did Levin wake up one morning, roll his fourteen-year-old Filipino sex-slave aside and just decide to go pro-Paris? I would tend to doubt it. Usually, when someone starts demonstrating such a glaring bias, there's a good reason. According to Rush & Molloy, TMZ's good reason includes being fed exclusives by Paris's mom Kathy. But the quid pro quo doesn't end with Paris's positive coverage on the site. TMZ has also reportedly given a researcher job to Jan Heger, the daughter of Paris's DUI lawyer Richard Hutton. So now we know where TMZ got a lot of its inside-info - straight from Hutton in exchange for a job for his daughter. Not only is TMZ journalistically sloppy, it is completely without ethics. But if you're trying to build a big site to compete with the other entertainment outlets you need to cultivate sources and gain inside access. These things matter more than credibility or character. Harvey Levin sold what little soul he had to Kathy Hilton and Richard Hutton - and now Paris Hilton's people have a new channel by which they can disseminate their spin.
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