Lily Allen Has A Bone To Pick With New York Times

Allen is pissed that after agreeing to a New York Times interview for a profile piece, a few unused photos from the accompanying photo shoot then appeared in the British tabloid OK! along with an interview – “World Exclusive: At Home With Lily Allen” – without the singer’s permission or getting paid for the pictures.

On her MySpace page, in a February 28 blog entry entitled, “The New York Time [sic] are cheap skanks,” Allen wrote:

“Needless to say I was mortified, in fact I was in tears, 6 photos of inside my home for everyone to see, and a made up interview that was very misleading. All this because I’d let the NYT photographer into my home.”

Allen wrote that “the [Times] reporter could not have been more lovely” and that she thanked the reporter for the story “ as it was very complimentary ,it’s not often people write nice things about me.”

Allen said that she normally wouldn’t have agreed to let photographers inside her home for the accompanying photo shoot, but “these seemed like special circumstances and after all TNYT is one of the most respected news publications in the world.”

That’s where Allen’s positive view of the Times ends. Allen wrote that she received an email from her press representative for the U.K., alerting her to the OK! story and saying, “this is exactly why i want everyone to use photo contracts! i dont know who these at home pics were done for but they have been sold to OK which is a pain in the arse as it looks like we have done OK…”

Allen said she assumed a photo contract was in place with the paper, writing:

“the American PR agency assured me the NYT have an unwritten agreement with the PR’s and nothing like this has ever happened before, they were as upset and angry as I am.”

Although OK! apologized to Allen, the singer wrote that “the NYT refuse to accept what they have done is morally wrong. Everybody assures me this is completely unheard of for the NYT to act in such a cheap and disgusting way.”

In the blog post she included an explanation she received from the Times – “As the copyright owner of thousands of photographs, a significant part of our business, like most news organizations, is the syndication of photos to third parties. This is very standard in the news business and I’m sorry that it comes as a surprise to your client.”

Allen was not pleased, writing “Uuuuurrggh , so patronizing, and gross. The world has become a dark place when The New York Times considers OK magazine to be ‘the news business.'”

Allen is currently on tour, with dates through June.

To read Lily Allen’s blog post click here.