TMZ’s ‘Britney Spears: The Price of Freedom’ Is Extremely Toxic
In 2007, when a California judge chose to take away Britney Spears’ custody over her two sons, TMZ founder Harvey Levin told the New York Times that Spears needed “a wake-up call.”
“It’s not a frivolous story anymore,” he said. “This is a woman who loves her kids who doesn’t have her kids. It’s now taken tragic elements.”
Levin and the late television producer Jim Paratore co-founded TMZ in 2005. Like pretty much all gossip publications at the time, the scrappy media site made good money covering Spears and meticulously tracked her every movement. The custody incident, New York Times reporter Mireya Navarro wrote at the time, demonstrated that the intense scrutiny surrounding Spears’ erratic behavior had “become a force of its own—one that sells magazines and music, increases Web traffic and gives obscure characters their minutes of fame.”