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[Letter Sent To Dotmusic Editor Andy Strickland] Andy, I had started to write to you with some background on Whitney Houston's relationship with the media and the tabloid media's persistent scavenging for any scrap of information about her that they can distort and re-print. I decided against that. No point - you never really listen because you only want to publish anything scandalous that you can find from tabloids which talk of alien abductions and damaging lies. In September, I wrote to you asking that you to report the fact that Whitney was in the midst of a sold out European tour. At the time, she was due to start the first of four shows at Wembley arena. The tour went on to become the biggest grossing arena tour of Europe in 1999. You decided against reporting that, but have continued to favour your picking up copies of US tabloids such as the National Enquirer, People and completely false newspaper reports. I even mailed in a review of the show which was written quite fairly if you’d even have bothered to read it. You have made no effort to find out the truth to any of your stories and attending the Wembley show would at least have given you the first steps to some kind of insight into what kind of a performer Whitney Houston is. You have no idea about who you're writing about. The more damning and salacious, the better as far as you are concerned. On 12 June 2000, I wrote again advising you that Whitney would perform three shows at Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City. The fact that you had invested so much negative webspace to Whitney, I presumed a journalist would finally jump at the chance to see Whitney first hand to assess for themselves just how "out of it" she really was. You didn't return to me with any comment - I knew exactly what that meant. I was enraged, but not surprised to see you had decided to pick up the worst review of Whitney's shows from the New York Post. Indeed, several fans attended that show and confirmed that Paula Froelich's review for the Post was completely fabricated. Whitney did not forget the words to her songs and decided she didn't want to sing them anymore. She did not sing 'Star Spangled Banner' or 'American Pie'.Your method of journalism is an insult to your sister publication, Music Week and a further insult to the many Whitney Houston fans who have time and again corrected the lies you spew in the interest of fair play and in presenting a more balanced take on Whitney Houston's recent media profile. If you were not interested in presenting facts rather than just re-hashing American tabloid stories, you should have saved us all the time and effort communicating with you. Please take this as notice that I will be removing all links to Dotmusic from my Whitney Houston Website - www.classicwhitney.com - and will be asking all Whitney Houston websites to do the same. Further, I am asking all Whitney Houston fans to refrain from posting on your Bulletin Board dedicated to her which you have allowed to be overrun with hateful posts because repeated requests for you to install a moderator as you have done with some of your other forums have fallen onto deaf ears. I have forged alliances with webmasters of many different artists over time and I will also be approaching them to remove all traces of dotmusic from their websites. You don't deserve the profile. I don't expect you to have the courage to address the way you have handled your reporting of Whitney Houston as your latest published response to fan's calls for you to correct your story was an insult to the fan's intelligence. You even had the nerve to claim you will present both sides of a story despite your report being riddled with hearsay and inaccuracies, not forgetting the patronising tone taken in the whole report. I believe you even use the word 'ungraciously' - you're team has hardly been the embodiment of grace. What exactly would you know about it? This mail is being copied out to all Whitney Houston websites, mailing lists and Bulletin Boards. Whitney's profile ensures that thousands of people will have read this by the end of the week. This is also being copied to United Business Media Managing Director, Douglas Shuard and Publisher Steve Redmond. Manish. NEWSFILE: 10 JULY
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