Media pays for kidnapping case, dirt on Sarah Palin

Jaycee Lee Dugard

Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston

The Associated Press is reporting that some news organizations are paying for interviews while covering the Jaycee Lee Dugard story. It’s a practice that is forbidden by most media outlets, but Vanity Fair magazine found a loophole around it in an upcoming issue featuring Levi Johnston—the former boyfriend of Sarah Palin’s oldest daughter, whose determined to take shots at Alaska’s former first family.

Hundreds of media outlets around the world are covering the Dugard story. Police say she was kidnapped from a school bus stop when she was 11 years old and imprisoned for 18 years by a convicted sex offender and his wife.

Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, are charged in the case.

When the AP tried to interview Garrido’s father, Manuel Garrido, the man refused unless he was paid. He told the wire service that an overseas media organization paid him $2,000 for an interview, but he refused to say which one it was. The AP refused to pay him.

Vanity Fair paid Johnston for his revelations about his life with the Palin family in the upcoming October issue of the magazine. Technically, Johnston “wrote” the piece.

Actually, Johnston dished dirt on the Palin family and Vanity Fair transcribed the interviews, edited them, and put it in a piece where the teen was labeled the writer. That way the magazine could pay him for writing a story, just as it would with other journalists.

[Via http://blog.mediajobs.net]