EXCLUSIVE

LANCE BASS PULLS A FAST ONE!
ON E! NEWS AND
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA

(November 9th, 2007 8:30AM PST)

BY ERIC LONGABARDI

Last week, former N’Sync boy band member Lance Bass told E! News in an "exclusive" that he had once been married to a friend in Las Vegas, a gag he said to get "free drinks". The "news" that the now gay singer's past hetro marriage set the media on fire. Reports from CNN, MSNBC, The Associated Press all reported the pop singer's claim as fact.

Turns out Bass was lying and later was forced to admit it was all just a joke when no official marriage records could be located in Clark County Nevada, the place weddings in Las Vegas are made legal.

ERS checked those records last week when it read the story on E! News online and when it could locate no record for the claimed wedding it contacted E! News and spoke with a senior editor about the discrepancy. The editor told ERS that although E! News had tried to verify Bass’s claim with the Clark County Marriage Bureau, he said they could find no record of any such wedding. Despite that E! ran the story, minus any caveats about the claimed marriage having no basis in fact.

ERS News calls the "Hollywood" Los Angeles suburb of Studio City, CA home. A couple of years ago we once saw Lance Bass get out of a Hummer at a very popular coffee spot on the corner of Ventura Blvd and Laurel Canyon Road. Bass had three "very attractive" young women in tow, two of which were identical twins, who were blonde and the stereotypical "Hollywood babes". Although Bass at the time was still an admitted "heterosexual man", our first person account of his "girl posse" would have never given us enough "fact" to run with a story that he was for sure "NOT" gay. Gay men hang out with gorgeous women, especially when they're very rich and famous. ERS believes it's always better to check the facts first, especially if what you do might be construed as "journalism". Is E! News journalism, you decide?

 

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