AMY WINEHOUSE - CLOONEY PHONY TABLOID STORIES "AN ISSUE"

CLOONEY PHONY TABLOID STORIES "AN ISSUE"

George Clooney on Thursday appeared to endorse a documentary being shown at the London Film Festival that purportedly shows how easy it is to plant phony stories about celebrities in tabloid publications. In the documentary, titled Starsuckers, director Chris Atkins and his team made up stories about Avril Lavigne (she supposedly fell asleep at a top nightclub in London), Amy Winehouse (her hair caught on fire), and Pixie Geldof (she hid candy in her bra), fed the phony stories to three London newspapers, the Daily Mail, Mirror, and Sun, and watched as the newspapers embellished them. At a news conference, Clooney, who is no stranger to such celebrity coverage, noted that in the past, publications used to require two reliable sources "and that doesn't seem to exist as much anymore." The actor, whose father is the veteran TV anchor Nick Clooney -- "I grew up around news," he said -- said that when he has sometimes complained about false stories about him. "And they go, 'We're not saying that, we're saying that a London tabloid has said it.' They're just reprinting and reprinting things that aren't necessarily true. I understand the problem with it. I understand why it happens, but it certainly is an issue." Clooney is attending the London Film Festival to promote his latest movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats, a comedy in which he plays a soldier with psychic abilities.

16/10/2009