How TMZ’s Harvey Levin cautiously became the key journalist in the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother
Here are some of the latest headlines on TMZ:
"Paris Hilton’s Hottest Shots Ever!!! Happy 45th BDAY!"
"‘Chicago Fire’ Star Brittany Curran Arrested, Booked on Drunk in Public Charge"
"Eminem Ex-Wife Facing Legal Trouble Over Crashing Car"
Kinda tabloidy, to be sure.
And the entertainment site, founded two decades ago by Harvey Levin, a onetime TV consumer reporter, has had more than its share of controversies.
Its paparazzi chase and confront celebrities. TMZ apologized for loud cheering in the newsroom just before its announcement that Charlie Kirk had died. The site is often first with reports on celebrity deaths, sometimes with gory details, but incorrectly said that musician Jerry Lee Lewis had died, two days before his actual death. Some ex-staffers accused the site of having a racist and misogynistic culture.
And yet lots of people love TMZ – 45 million visits in January – and its TV show. Fox Entertainment bought the site in 2021.
I bring all this up because Harvey Levin, under incredible pressure, has become a paragon of journalistic responsibility and restraint.
In the heartbreaking disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Levin is now a central player because a man purporting to know about her abduction has written to TMZ four times. Levin is closely consulting with the FBI, which is exactly what he should be doing.
In fact, since the source – is demanding payment in Bitcoin for his information – doesn’t trust the government, Levin has offered to act as a negotiator between him and the FBI. The bureau approved but the man has not agreed.
The TMZ founder is also careful to say he doesn’t know if his pen pal is real or fake in terms of what he claims to know, and cannot vouch for him.
While he may offer a quote from the latest missive, he leaves out most of these letters in deference to the life-threatening nature of the situation.
CAN’T SAY ‘FOR SURE’ IF PERSON CLAIMING TO KNOW PERPETRATOR IN GUTHRIE CASE IS ‘LEGIT’: HARVEY LEVIN
In an interview on CNN, Levin spoke of the kidnappers of Nancy Guthrie from her Arizona home, where blood was found. "We know it’s the same person because they keep putting the same Bitcoin address in, saying that he can lead them to Nancy and the kidnappers. I say that plural…Let me just read you this….’I know what I saw five days ago south of the border and I was told to shut up. So I know who he is and that was definitely Nancy with them.’ So he says ‘them,’ plural. And in another email, a previous one, he also referred to the kidnappers in the plural."
Levin is operating under the assumption that Nancy Guthrie is still alive – if his tipster is not a fraud – and is now angling for the FBI’s $100,000 in reward money. He claims to know where she is. After more than two weeks, many of us were sadly starting to believe she was no longer with us.
"I’m not going to get into it until and unless he actually gives us the information because I feel like this is becoming a cat-and-mouse game," Levin told anchor Kate Bolduan. . So what we said to him was, look, you don’t trust the FBI, you’ve made that clear. And so if you’re contacting us, just give us the info, we’ll give it to the FBI. And then if that leads to finding Nancy and the arrest of the kidnapper, then there’s a record that you’re the one who did it and you’ll get the ransom money."
In the latest letter, Levin recalled, the source said, "‘Look, I have a burglary conviction 10 years ago,’ which I think is really interesting. He has a burglary conviction because you’re wondering, why is this guy somehow connected to the kidnapper? So he said, look, he has a record. And he’s worried, it sounds like, of getting implicated in this somehow. He’s worried of retaliation by the people who have done this. He gets into that in several of the letters."
Meanwhile, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos announced he has cleared all Guthrie family members, who he said have been cooperative, and accused the media of being "cruel." This was a clear reference to NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield, who doubled and tripled down in saying she had a source saying the husband of Savannah Guthrie’s sister Annie was a prime suspect in the investigation, even when the sheriff’s department called that "reckless" and said it had no suspects.
This back-and-forth between TMZ and the alleged whistle-blower may turn out to be nothing more than a twisted footnote. But it has put the website usually obsessed with the likes of Paris Hilton in the center of a saga to which the whole country seems addicted, and has created the possibility that Savannah Guthrie may never return to "Today."
Harvey Levin, with his suitably cautious approach, is walking a difficult tightrope, and he knows it.
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"Look, there have been times we’ve worked with law enforcement, but most of the time there’s a wall, and you know, they are sources, but we’re not cooperating…
"It’s tricky to navigate this because we’re not part of law enforcement at the same time. It’s obvious that somebody’s life hangs in the balance here. So we’re trying to do as much as we can and also kind of draw that line between journalism and helping law enforcement."