The Smoking Gun
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Screenshot from The Smoking Gun |
The Smoking Gun is a
website that posts legal documents, arrest records, and police
mugshots on a daily basis. The intent is to bring to the public light information that is damning, shocking, outrageous, or amazing, yet also somewhat obscure or unreported by more mainstream media sources. Most of the site's content revolves around historical and current events, although it also features documents and photos relating to out-of-the-ordinary crimes and people.
The "smoking gun" name refers to the
smoking gun metaphor, which is commonly used to describe a damning piece of
evidence.
One section of the site is made up entirely of "
riders" in the
contracts of popular music acts, focusing on the artists' personal demands; some of the publicized demands are either highly self-indulgent or inherently humorous.
The
website was founded in
1997 by
William Bastone and
Daniel Green, former
reporters for the
Village Voice. Most of The Smoking Gun's content is obtained by
Freedom of Information Act requests to federal, state, and local
law enforcement agencies, and from
public records such as court documents. The site has used those requests to assemble a
collection of mugshots of current and historical celebrities.
Court TV purchased The Smoking Gun in
2000. In January 2006, The Smoking Gun was the first to report that
James Frey fabricated parts of his bestselling
memoir,
A Million Little Pieces.
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Smoking gun*
The Smoking Gun website
