TMZ paid for footage displayed on a security camera monitor at the Revel Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, which had been recorded on a cellphone by a surveillance officer, the New Yorker reported. TMZ then acquired the second video for $90,000.
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TMZ declined to discuss the payments when asked by the magazine.
The article revealed that after guards responded to an incident between Rice and Janay Palmer in a lobby of the casino, surveillance officers who knew that TMZ paid for such information began debating whether Rice’s on-camera transgression could result in a handsome profit.
According to a former TMZ photographer, the site paid fifteen thousand dollars. The videos, released separately, provoked outrage and put the National Football League on the defensive in a way it had never been over the course of its long history.
Prosecutors had possession of all the footage and by the time the second video became public, Rice had already been allowed to enter a diversion program that spared the former Rutgers University product jail time and paved way for the arrest to be expunged.
“TMZ did the job the mainstream sports media failed to do in showing us the ugliness of this incident”, Baltimore Sun TV columnist David Zurawik wrote after Rice had been suspended.
The first tape released, of Rice dragging Palmer’s unconscious body, provoked shock; the followup, of him actually striking her, provoked outrage.
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The New Yorker says TMZ gets other celebrity news from a Delta Airlines employee and a limousine service.
