Recently, a minor scandal broke out in Hollywood. The protagonist of the scandal, Casey Bloys, is the head of the HBO branch of Warner Group. He controls all the business of Warner Max streaming media platform. He can be said to be the most powerful person under the group’s boss David Zaslav. one of the important figures.

Zendaya poses with Kathy Burroughs after Zendaya won Emmy Award

However, this time, Broth was kicked out. He had repeatedly planned to use fake accounts on social media to ridicule those media people who criticized HBO film and television programs. If this kind of pediatric practice is applied to ordinary people, once it is exposed, it will only be laughed at at most. But for the top executives of a century-old Hollywood store to use such backhanded tactics to retaliate against those who hold different opinions, it seems a bit petty; even if it rises to the level of professional ethics and character, I'm afraid they all lost quite a bit. Therefore, it is no wonder that once this matter was disclosed, there were many calls for Kathy Broth to resign on social media.

The news was originally reported by "Rolling Stone" magazine, and the person who exclusively broke the news to "Rolling Stone" magazine was Sully Temori, a former HBO employee who worked as an executive assistant under Kathy Burroughs. ). Temerly joined the HBO team in 2015 and was promoted to administrative assistant two years later. In August 2021, he joined the production team of the HBO series "The Idol" and was responsible for script coordination. However, this topical work starring Lily-Rose Depp, The Weeknd, and Jennie, a member of the Korean girl group BLACKPINK, encountered almost unanimous negative reviews from the media after it was aired. In August this year, it was announced that it would not continue filming the second episode. season. As for Suri Temerli, he was suddenly fired by HBO as early as October 2021 during the preparation stage of the show. This year, he has sued several HBO executives, as well as the producer, director, and singer The Weeknd, who starred in the show, to a U.S. arbitration court, demanding that HBO pay mental compensation for unfair dismissal and workplace harassment.

The lawsuit is still ongoing. Perhaps in order to put pressure on his former employer, Temerly thought of a way to find the media to break the news, and handed the contents of six text messages between several HBO executives to the reporters of Rolling Stone. The text message was sent by Kathleen Burroughs herself and was addressed to Kathleen McCaffrey, senior vice president of HBO Television. The text was in April 2020 and was about a New York magazine drama review. When Kathryn VanArendonk wrote a negative review for the HBO series Perry Mason, the impact was so bad that they had to find a way to deal with it. Eventually, the two executives figured out how to create a fake Twitter account—the two used the term “secret army” as a proxy in their text messages—and in June 2020, they commissioned an administrative assistant to Suli Temerly handled this matter in detail.

"Mason" poster

In April 2021, a new account named Kelly Shepard responded to "Rolling Stone" drama critic Alan Sepinwall and the "New York Times" on Twitter Drama critic James Poniewozik wrote a negative review of the HBO series The Nevers. According to Temerly's admission, he created the account, and the specific posting instructions came directly from HBO executive Katherine McCaffrey and the company's top executive, Kathy Broth. In addition, he was ordered to flood the online comment areas of several Hollywood media outlets, posting multiple times to support HBO's own works and criticize those with different opinions.

"The Forever" poster

On November 2, it happened to be HBO's turn to hold a press briefing to announce its exciting program schedule for 2024. The person who chaired the meeting was Casey Broth, the head of the company. At the meeting, he publicly apologized for his wrongdoing. "Everyone who knows me knows that as the director of program production, I have always been very supportive of the works that our family has decided to put on and all the people involved in the production. Of course I hope that our series will be wonderful, and I hope The audience likes it, and I hope that you, the media, can appreciate it. I have always attached great importance to your media’s opinion of our series.” Kathy Broth said, “In view of this, coupled with the major events in 2020 and 2021, Due to the environment, I was forced to work remotely from home and wasted a lot of time on Twitter every day. Finally, I came up with such a very, very stupid way to vent my anger."

Casey, who was trying to find excuses for himself, said that his exposed wrongdoing was, at best, instructing his subordinates to send six tweets that should not have been sent in a year and a half. In terms of quantity and extent, It shouldn't be extremely bad in nature, but he still wants to apologize to those drama critics. In addition, he also emphasized that after that, he had changed his ways, and when he had different views, he would switch to sending direct messages to the other party on social media to have frank and direct conversations - "I think This might be a healthier way."