On Oct. 28, TMZ was first to report Matthew Perry’s drowning death. The media outlet, which over the past two decades has become a byword for hard-edged celebrity coverage, cited law enforcement sources and ran a redacted audio clip it’d obtained of a dispatcher communicating with emergency personnel before running photos of the actor’s stricken parents arriving at his home.
The site has been renowned and reviled for such lightning scoops. Its casualties include Todd Fisher, who has uniquely experienced its force as a merciless reaper. TMZ broke the news of the death of his sister Carrie. Then, the next day, it was first to report that his mother, Debbie Reynolds, had been transported from his home, where she’d been discussing funeral plans for Carrie, to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center because of a possible stroke. (TMZ had audio of the dispatch call.) She soon died there. “They have relationships with people willing to be unethical,” Fisher says. “Within 10 minutes of me finding out [she’d died], it was already out.”
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