TMZ Founder Harvey Levin Calls Out Media For Bullying Tactics

TMZ boss Harvey Levin claims that some legacy media outlets are in the process of destroying their own credibility through a relentless hostility toward Donald Trump which has devolved into a form of bullying others who may want to try to reach some common ground with the president.

An attorney who also does the man/women on the street interviews in between cases on The People’s Court in addition to running (and starring on) the popular celebrity gossip network, Levin called out the media during a panel discussion at a National Association Broadcasters event in Las Vegas.

Levin recently met with President Trump at the White House to discuss an unspecified project and other things. Levin interviewed the future president at Trump Tower last fall for what apparently was supposed to be a one-off Fox News special called Objectified.

Based on good ratings, Objectified is getting a series run and will feature interviews with more celebrities about their cherished, meaningful personal possessions. According to the New York Times, Harvey Levin’s visit with Trump in D. C. was about gauging the possibility of a second interview with the president. Levin supposedly also wanted to ask Trump if he would help convince New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to guest on the new show, although it’s unclear if they are still friends after Brady bailed on White House visit on April 19 by the Super Bowl champions.

A former Democrat and independent before he ran for president on the Republican ticket, Donald Trump regularly mixed with celebrities and they with him during his long career in the media spotlight. Attitudes toward Trump hardened among the show business community for a variety of reasons once he officially entered the presidential contest and particularly once he competed one-on-one with celebrity favorite and Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.

In addition to pointing out how he got criticized in the media for the March sit-down with Trump, Levin recalled how both Kanye West and Steve Harvey were also denounced merely for meeting with President-elect Trump at Trump Tower during the transition period. “I guess the solution is nobody should see him. It should be a boycott. That is so stupid,” Levin observed.

TMZ’s Harvey Levin Opens Up About His Meeting With President Trump https://t.co/dn10pMKnt8 pic.twitter.com/qydamZ1TDd

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 26, 2017

In this polarized environment, the TMZ impresario described how, in his opinion, many media outlets have abandoned any semblance of objectivity as they try to bully other people into a self-defeating Trump boycott, the Washington Free Beacon and other news portals reported.

“What I find unbelievable is the bullying in traditional media. I think there are some traditional media outlets that are being ruined by this administration and ruined by their own deeds. There are certain networks and newspapers that are very clear on who they are and what they feel and that’s fine…But when you pretend like you’re objective but you’re not, and you are angry and you are trying to ‘kill’ and bully, I think that is ‘killing’ [them]. And I don’t think they know it yet but I think some of the most trusted names in news are not trusted anymore because of this.”

Noting that he disagrees with Trump on a range of issues, Levin added that the effort to boycott Trump instead of seizing the opportunity to discuss policy with him face-to-face is really dumb, especially since the president has demonstrated that he tends to change his mind on certain political positions.

“I went in there, and I voiced an opinion on some things, and why would you not get in that game? If you disagree, the solution is to boycott?…so if he’s willing to change his mind, why would you sit on the sidelines, bully people who go in there — it’s absurd…”

That Levin’s remarks in the above clip prompted a smattering of applause among broadcasting professionals in the audience may or may not be an example of media bias.

Politico recently published a detailed story insisting that location partially explains the media groupthink phenomenon.

“The national media really does work in a bubble…and the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties…The online media, liberated from printing presses and local ad bases, has been free to form clusters, piggyback-style, on the industries and government that it covers…Resist—if you can—the conservative reflex to absorb this data and conclude that the media deliberately twists the news in favor of Democrats. Instead, take it the way a social scientist would take it: The people who report, edit, produce and publish news can’t help being affected—deeply affected—by the environment around them…”

Parenthetically, the new CEO of Politico worked in the Bill Clinton administration and has donated about $65,000 to Democrat candidates since the year 2000, the Free Beacon noted.

[Featured Image by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Images]