On Monday, just hours after publishing a scathing article about Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, GQ magazine pulled the article from its website after receiving a complaint from a spokesman from the company, the Washington Post reported.
The story, written by film critic Jason Bailey, blasted Zaslov’s handling of the company’s entertainment arm, including the layoffs at Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and his decision to scrap completed films like “Batgirl.”
In his piece, Bailey described Zaslav as “the most hated man in Hollywood” and compared him to the tyrannical patriarch Logan Roy from the series “Succession.”
Not long after Bailey’s article appeared online, a spokesman for Warner Bros. Discovery complained to GQ, according to an unnamed source.
By early Monday afternoon, the online article was extensively edited to soften the tone. Bailey’s description of Zaslav as “the most hated man in Hollywood” was one of the lines removed from the article, as was his comparison to the “Succession” character.
Jason Bailey told the Washington Post that after the edits were made, he asked GQ editors to remove his name from the byline. But one editor told him that GQ would not keep an article on its website without a byline, so later that afternoon, the article was gone.
A spokeswoman for GQ said in a statement that Bailey’s article was posted online before it was “properly edited.” She confirmed that the article was pulled after Bailey requested that his byline be removed.
The spokeswoman said that the magazine regretted “the editorial error” that allowed the article to be published “before it was ready.”
According to a spokesman for Warner Bros. Discovery, the complaint was prompted by Bailey’s failure to request comment from the company before publication. The spokesman said Bailey did not attempt to contact the company “to fact-check the substance of the piece.”
The spokesman added that Warner Bros. Discovery contacted GQ to ask that the “numerous inaccuracies” in the article “be corrected.” He said during this process, GQ editors pulled the article.
