When Entertainment Scoops Become Leverage

Franchise secrecy has created an entire economy around knowing information before everyone else. But what happens when access to that information becomes leverage over the people being covered?

Adam looks at the controversy surrounding Jeff Sneider’s public threat to publish damaging rumors about an actress if her team would not cooperate with him, and uses it to examine the larger ethical problems surrounding scoop culture, access journalism and the artificial scarcity of information around major franchises.

The issue isn’t whether insiders sometimes get things right. It’s what journalists are willing to do with the power that access gives them.