AICN & "Cloverifled" Part 3: Further Exposure

Dear Constant Reader,

It's great when someone more knowledgeable than I continues to confirm the fact that Moriarty and Harry Knowles are thieves of the highest order.
Their history of misleading their readers is documented all over the web, and Semidi has put together a great article about their continued deceptions :


AICN’s Moriarty Loses More Credibilty
Sunday, July 15th, 2007 in 1-18-08, Film & TV, Writing

Ain’t It Cool News’ “Moriarty” maintains that AICN is to be trusted without a doubt when covering, well, anything — but especially Cloverfield.

However, as I stated earlier in a reply to Seth’s comment here concerning some comments Moriarty made at AICN about the movie:

…since Moriarty sites no source for his claims, I don’t feel them all that trustworthy. Further, for all we know Moriarty could be an unwitting conduit for misinformation.

Frankly, Moriarty’s “RUMOR CONTROL” piece does nothing to allay the skepticism I have toward him, AICN, and all media outlets.

First, he links to this story that he wrote on June 21st in which he savages someone for perpetrating a hoax regarding The Dark Tower movie that is in pre-production:

It’s magnificent horseshit of the highest degree, and the author of that site obviously wants to be the Supershadow of THE DARK TOWER, a bald-faced fabricator who uses a property with a huge fanbase to try and satisfy their own sad need for attention.

Well, Moriarty didn’t mind giving the guy attention, as the “RUMOR CONTROL” post shows:

I’ve since learned that the guy who ran that [Dark Tower] blog may well have been hired to be on an Abrams film… just not the one he thought he was working on. That may have been the first leak on CLOVERFIELD, but he didn’t know enough to make it worthwhile.

So Moriarty relied on a source he had earlier called “a bald-faced fabricator.” That’s so comforting. Why Mo, how ever could we doubt you as a trustworthy journalist?

Second, Moriarty makes the following claim in “RUMOR CONTROL” about a Cloverfield piece he wrote on June 25th:

When I wrote that story, I didn’t realize that Abrams was going to be pursuing a sort of veil of complete secrecy around the film, and I didn’t know he’d be creating a game leading up to the release.

With the above statements, Moriarty has given me — and everyone else who reads him — yet another reason to take what he writes with a grain of salt. Just because he, and AICN, get a lot of leads and tips doesn’t mean that he and the site are infallible.

I’ve been a journalist. I’ve had sources try to use me for their own agendas by telling my outright lies or lies of omission. I’ve had sources try to divert my attention from one story with something they thought I would find juicier. It’s the nature of the business. Moriarty — and AICN — aren’t exempt from this.

Further, I have to wonder how often the reporters at AICN get confirmation from multiple sources before running a story; very often the source of the story could be fired or sued if caught leaking the info, so tipping off the wrong person that there’s a leak could result in a burned source — and less gossip for AICN to print.

Then we have the fact that studios and production companies release disinformation to sites like AICN all the time to protect valuable story lines and casting changes from leaks. Then there are those times when misinformation gets spread and a producer will keep quite because his movie is inadvertently getting a lot of buzz from the erroneous info.

Not that we know anyone who’s done that, lately.

Finally, things can change at a moment’s notice. Five days of re-shooting may be required due to script rewrites or technical problems or an injured actor, so the info that gets leaked to AICN one week could be completely invalid the next. And the folks at AICN might not find that out for a while — if at all.

Be skeptical of everything you read that purports to be fact. It’s just the sensible thing to do.

And Mo, if you were looking to reassure people about your credibility you need to stop while you’re behind.

(Via We Were the Cool Kids)

UPDATE: Here’s the Wikipedia article about Ain’t It Cool News with a few reasons why you should view the site with a healthy dose of skepticism. According to the entry (although it does not cite a source for this info), Harry “Hercules” Knowles used to falsify stories by pretending information he obtained from online newsgroups came from Hollywood insiders.

I also recommend (and this is Arthur speaking) that you check out this article which contains even more links regarding the immoral actions of AICN :
A Question of Ethics


Arthur
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