DR. PHIL SUES WEBSITE FOR SCOOPING HIM WITH HIS OWN INTERVIEW

The sports website Deadspin, owned by Gawker Media, may have published the original scoop that Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s supposedly dead “girlfriend,” Lennay Kekua, never existed, but it was Dr. Phil McGraw who put the man who had pretended to be Lennay in phone conversations with Te’o on television for the first time. Now, McGraw in a lawsuit claims that Deadspin grabbed footage of his interview with the man, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, and posted it on its website before most of the stations that carry the Dr. Phil Show could air it. In the words of the lawsuit: “Gawker deliberately set out to get ‘the jump’ on the rest of the country and ‘scoop’ Dr. Phil with his own content. They did not earn that right, they stole it. They did not conduct the interview, they stole it. They did not ask permission, they blatantly and knowingly infringed the copyright of the content owner and did so in a way that furthered their interest to the maximum and undercut the rightful owner of the protected material.” The result of the alleged theft, the lawsuit claims, was a significant drop in the ratings for the Dr. Phil Show and a commensurate loss of revenue. Gawker Media did not immediately respond to the lawsuit.