TMZ Busted by Corporate Cousins The Smoking Gun

In Portfolio.com's year-end media roundup, this blogger spent a few dozen words throwing cold water on AOL-Time Warner's old raison d'être, the now largely ignored concept of synergy.

Yesterday brought a strange example of synergy's opposite, how one division of a company can actually tear down another.

TMZ, the gossip site which was formerly a joint venture between AOL and Time Warner but which, post-split, is the property of Time Warner alone, published an "exclusive" headlined "The JFK Photo That Could Have Changed History." The site breathlessly explained, "TMZ has obtained a never-before-published photograph which appears to show John F. Kennedy on a boat filled with naked women—it's a photo that could have altered world events."

Far from being a "never-before published"—or containing a president of the United States—the photo was revealed to be from a 1967 Playboy spread, TMZ having been completely duped. The hoax was revealed by The Smoking Gun, a site owned (as the New York Times' Brian Stelter pointed out) by Turner, another division of Time Warner.

TMZ was forced to print a sheepish retraction later in the day that read in part, "We've now confirmed the photo was part of a Playboy spread in 1967."

Well, it's more like their corporate cousins confirmed it first. But, hey, what's a little credit among family?