Posted by Dimond Uses Jackson for Financial Gain …Again – MJEOL Bullet #33
Court TV’s Diane Dimond has once again used Michael Jackson to procure gains in her financial and career status. It was announced on the Business Wire (Nov 24) that she will now host Court TV’s Hollywood at Large.
Dimond’s obvious reward for reporting various Jackson information, confirmed or not, has been examined by some who see her as little more than a gossip-monger with an unjustly elevated platform. The press release announcing her supposed triumph specifically points to her work with breaking the recent Jackson story as a way to convince people of her alleged worthiness for the new position.
However, upon closer inspection, one could wonder what the COO of Court TV, Art Bell, is thinking by making her their new star. Dimond rode to fame working for the now defunct tabloid TV show Hard Copy. She got into hot water with Jackson, and the law, when she was spreading a damaging lie about the 1993 case from one of her “sources.”
Jackson subsequently won a defamation of character lawsuit against her main source, Victor Gutierrez. Dimond herself escaped responsibility by wrapping herself around the “journalist” mantra. Dimond recently spread the apparently false story that the District Attorney, Tom Sneddon, found “love letters” at Michael Jackson’s home. She even appeared on Larry King Live (Nov 24) proclaiming as much:
DIMOND: He[Jackson] remembered love letters — that’s how they’re described, love letters — that he had written to this 12-year-old boy that were in the boy’s home. At the time, the boy, the mother, the family was up at Neverland. Someone somehow was dispatched, I’m told, by the Michael Jackson camp down to their Los Angeles-area apartment, and suddenly, those letters disappeared. [b]KING: [/b]Could that have been this… [b]DIMOND:[/b] That’s what Mr. Sneddon and the sheriff were looking for when they went into Neverland, that stack of love letters.
She goes on to avow that there was an absolute certainty these love letters existed in conversation with Larry King and other panelists who appeared on the show that night:
KING: Do we — hold it! Does anyone here — does anyone here — anyone — know of the existence of these letters? [b]COCHRAN:[/b] I don’t. I mean, I think that’s…
DIMOND: Absolutely. I do.COCHRAN: … again, speculation.
DIMOND: I do!
COCHRAN: I don’t know of this.
KING: Hold it!
COCHRAN: I’ve never seen them. The only…
DIMOND: I absolutely know of their existence!
KING: Diane, have you read them?
DIMOND: No, I have not read them, but I absolutely know that that…
COCHRAN: So how do we know?
DIMOND: … was tops on the list of the DA and sheriff’s department, things to look for inside Neverland.
However, Nola Foulston, Kansas City District Attorney, said on Fox News show [i]On the Record[/i] that she has spoke with DA Sneddon recently, and he “categorically” denied the existence of any such “love letters”.
It appears the story was first reported by a London tabloid (see http://site.mjeol.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=319 – Love Letters Story a Fake).
There is a rising level of suspicion surrounding Dimond’s ability to get her hands on information that no other news source is able to independently verify at that time. There are questions concerning whether or not she was being fed direct information from Sneddon. Also suspicious was the timing surrounding her involvement in this case.
Dimond was reportedly one of the first reporters, if not the first reporter, at Neverland when Jackson’s home was searched by police.
She was also the first to know of the existence of an arrest warrant against Jackson. Either she was alerted directly by someone in the DA’s or Sheriff’s office BEFORE Jackson’s home was search, or she’s just extremely lucky.
Most think the former is a more accurate description. The obvious closeness to Sneddon could cause problems if any in the media start to publicly question why she was able to get her hands on that kind of information so soon in the case (see [url=http://site.mjeol.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=316]Dimond & Sneddon: Too Close for Confort?[/url]). Thus, her current information – the alleged “love letters” story – may have been a damaging misstep among many she’s had throughout her career.
Whether Sneddon was illegally leaking information from the case directly to Dimond or not can only be answered by either of those two parties. Thus far, some have yet to understand Dimonds sudden increase in stature for essentially doing nothing more than any other tabloid reporter with “good connections” could do.
>>http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0311/24/lkl.00.html – Larry King Interview full transcript
>>http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20031124005532&newsLang=en – BusinessWire Press Release
-MJEOL