Ryan Seacrest

Ryan Seacrest

Ryan is quite simply one of the most influential, well-regarded, and well-known names in Hollywood. He is the quintessential Hollywood insider who...Full Bio

 

TMZ’s Harvey Levin Responds to Criticism Following Kobe Bryant Crash

Golden State Warriors v Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles and the rest of the world are still trying to grasp the shocking and tragic death of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. TMZ was first to break the news on Sunday, January 26, shortly after the private helicopter Bryant, his daughter, and seven other people were traveling in crashed.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva addressed media outlets during a press conference Sunday afternoon. “There was wide speculation as to who their identities are, however it would be entirely inappropriate right now to identify anyone by name, until the coroner has made the identification through their very deliberative process, and until they’ve made notifications to next of kin,” Villanueva said at the time. “It would be extremely disrespectful to understand that your loved ones perished and you learned about it from TMZ. That is just wholly inappropriate. So we’re not going to be going there.”

The remaining passengers and pilot have since been identified as John Altobelli, a baseball coach at Orange Coast College, his wife Keri and their daughter Alyssa; basketball coach Christina Mauser; Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton; and the pilot Ara Zobayan.

TMZ's Harvey Levin shared with Seacrest on-air on Monday, January 27, that Bryant’s “camp” was informed prior to TMZ breaking the news and acknowledged breaking the news was a “balancing act” in regards to the fellow victims.

“I’m not going to tell you how we got it,” Harvey said. “I will tell you that the initial phone call — I just got a call from somebody I knew at law enforcement who called me up and told me — and then we made made a series of phone calls and we were dealing with various people from Kobe’s camp — various. So everybody knew we were working on the story and they were OK with us putting it up when we did it.”

“It is an issue that there were other people on board as well,” Levin continued. “… Once we confirmed Kobe and once his team knows and they’re OK with it — look, we put the story up and everybody else did too. It is a balancing act … it’s just so sad. … I’ve got to tell you in the 14 years that we’ve done this, I’ve never seen anything like this and it includes Prince and Michael Jackson’s deaths. The level of interest in this story and the emotion is about as big as anything that I’ve ever seen at TMZ. … [Just so] tragic and sudden.”

Listen back to the audio above to hear more from Levin, who also commented on the weather and other information known so far.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Bryant family as well as the fellow passengers’ families and friends during this tragic time.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)


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