The three members of TMZ’s new Washington, D.C., bureau arrived at Capitol Hill last Monday ready and eager to stick their cameras in lawmakers’ faces and ask them uncomfortable questions. But they were surprised to find that members of the House wouldn’t be returning to work for another day. “I was laughing — ‘Oh, just wait until you see how infrequently these people work,’” said one congressional reporter. “It’s, like, a maximum four-day week.”

The celebrity-gossip outlet’s Washington operation had started off with a bang. The partial government shutdown had enraged TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who thought he might shame Congress back into session by publicizing how lawmakers were spending their recess while federal workers went without pay. The photos did not disappoint. There was a khaki-clad Lindsey Graham at Disney World, holding a bubble wand and boarding Space Mountain. There was Ted Cruz scrolling in his Economy Plus seat. There were members of Congress touring Edinburgh Castle while on a trip to Scotland. “The reaction in D.C. was, ‘Oh, that’s just a codel,’” said Washington communications veteran Nu Wexler, referring to a congressional delegation. It wasn’t clear TMZ understood the distinction or if it cared. “Stories like that will grab people,” said Wexler.

TMZ’s lack of familiarity with Washington’s weird ways is both a drawback and a strength. Its D.C. reporters do not seem to have experience covering Washington. And they are now crowdsourcing their way through the learning curve, asking for help finding bathrooms and restaurants and interview subjects. They’ve also printed out the pictures of House members to study their faces. But as the political paparazzi photos show, they can unearth stories that more jaded reporters have passed over as business as usual. The recent scandal over Eric Swalwell’s much-rumored creepiness and previously unreported sexual misconduct underscored that there is plenty of room for different newsgathering sensibilities.

Veterans are greeting the arrival of TMZ’s aggressively tabloid approach with a mix of curiosity and wariness. “If they can expose scumbags who rape and abuse women, that would be a great public service,” said Axios CEO Jim VandeHei. “If they just make a mockery of a widely mocked institution, that would be a shame. Let’s see the road they choose.”

Hill staffers have similarly mixed feelings. “As a taxpayer and a citizen and someone represented by the government, I think it’s exciting that TMZ is coming and shaking things up,” said a Republican congressional aide. “But as a comms staffer and someone who is responsible for the reputation of a member of Congress, part of it is nerve-racking. With TMZ’s sensationalized style of news, it’s very easy to take a picture and spin it out of control.” Democratic leadership in the House said it would work to connect offices with the tabloid but advised that staff “please not outreach to them directly,” Playbook reported.

“I think a lot of people in D.C. are very circumspect about the fact that the Senate is full of people who are way too old to be there, including Mitch McConnell,” said one reporter. “He has people guiding him around, he can’t really answer questions — it’s really striking, and I feel like a lot of people are very hands off with that. TMZ is not going to be hands off.”

At the moment, TMZ is not credentialed through the House, which means reporters can’t go in the Capitol Building proper. They’re confined to the three House and three Senate office buildings open to the public. There’s also the sidewalk, where one TMZ reporter was told to “shut the fuck up” while reporting live. The three TMZ staffers assigned to the bureau are now living in D.C., according to Levin. “Every day at the end of the day, you guys are going to be at our TMZ office, which actually isn’t really an office, because we couldn’t afford an office,” he said on TMZ Live. “But we have a $325 card table, so it’s an expensive one.”

Some reporters said the more the merrier, noting that TMZ will ask questions that more traditional reporters would not, including whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really cut off the penis of a dead raccoon and what’s behind his fascination with roadkill. (Kennedy did not respond.) Such questions have value for a different audience from the one reading Axios or Punchbowl every morning. “It’s good for these institutions to have fresh eyes on them. Maybe a decade ago I would have been like, That’s ridiculous. TMZ is a celebrity thing,” said one political reporter. “But politics is ridiculous right now. Sure, they’re not going to ask serious policy questions, but Capitol Hill is not doing serious policy right now.”

The government is still partially shut down. Republican Tony Gonzales joined Swalwell in announcing his resignation following allegations of sexual misconduct, while Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned after she was accused of stealing $5 million from FEMA disaster funds for personal use. Cory Mills, accused of sexually harassing his ex-girlfriend, assault, and campaign-finance misrepresentation, is facing pressure to step down. Meanwhile, the secretary of Labor resigned after it was revealed that she had asked young staffers to bring “josh sauvi B” to her hotel room, among other transgressions committed by her and her family.

In Trump’s Washington, the line between politician and entertainer is especially blurry. Some are surprised that it took TMZ this long to get involved. Not for a lack of trying: Levin reportedly tried to scout out office space for a D.C. venture back in 2007, but then-parent company Time Warner, fearing regulatory backlash, killed the project. Still, TMZ has engaged in politics over the years, most notably when it published a video of Representative Lauren Boebert groping her date in a theater.

Some wonder how long TMZ’s interest in Washington will last. “I think they’re going to find that this place, when there’s not a massive scandal erupting, is kind of boring,” said one veteran congressional reporter. “What makes it exciting for people who cover it every day is you have to be really interested in legislating and policymaking, and policy is not very TMZ.” Embarrassing footage of lawmakers will get it only so far. “This is probably, per square foot, the most covered building on planet Earth, besides the White House,” one reporter said. “All of the networks have cameras; everyone has an iPhone.”

But it has other ways of standing out. “TMZ is going to come in with tabloid instincts and mostly editorial independence — that is, they don’t have as many relationships to protect. They’re not trying to gain access or sell event sponsorships or things like that,” said Wexler. Still, given that the Murdochs have owned TMZ since 2021, it remains to be seen how much freedom it will have to embarrass Trump’s cronies or even the president himself. “I don’t think you can really cover Washington while ignoring the executive branch or protecting the executive branch,” said Wexler. “If people notice early on that Trump-related stories are dying out or aren’t being covered by TMZ, that will be a problem for them.”

“There are a lot of people in D.C. with some aspect of power and scandal that goes unreported, sometimes because they are useful to reporters,” said one journalist. “TMZ has a way — whether through people giving them hospital records or screenshots — of getting over the hump on some of these stories.” It’s also willing to cross lines that other media outlets won’t; it’s widely known that the outlet has paid sources for information in the past, an ethical red line for most media organizations since it means the information could be compromised or false. As one congressional staffer noted, “Everyone is notoriously underpaid here.”

Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

More From This Series

Does the New York Times Need a Magazine? 

‘Look, Mommy Was in Vogue’ 

How an Embittered Brit Decimated the Washington Post 

© Daily Intelligencer