LOS ANGELES — George Clooney is known as a prankster, but his plan to undermine a Web site that posts celebrity sightings is no joke, his publicist said.
Clooney has suggested swamping Gawker.com's "Gawker Stalker" feature with false notes about stars' whereabouts, spokesman Stan Rosenfield said.
In an e-mail Rosenfield distributed recently on Clooney's behalf to other high-powered publicists, the actor calls for publicity firms and their clients to join the effort against the site that some have called a threat to celebrities.
"There is a simple way to render these guys useless," Clooney said in the message. "Flood their Web site with bogus sightings. Get your clients to get 10 friends to text in fake sightings of any number of stars.
"A couple hundred conflicting sightings and this Web site is worthless. No need to try to create new laws to restrict free speech. Just make them useless. That's the fun of it. And then sit back and enjoy the ride," Clooney writes, signing the note, "Thanks, George."
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Rosenfield said he did not know how the e-mail, which was intended as private, was publicly released and reported last week by the New York Post.
Clooney's campaign may be bearing fruit. Rosenfield said he heard from two publicists whose clients were said by Gawker Stalker to have been spotted in New York when the stars were actually abroad.
Clooney has weighed in before on celebrity privacy. Although he's a defender of the First Amendment, he has criticized tabloids and the paparazzi as sometimes going over the line.
Gawker had been posting map-free "Stalker" sightings for two years. Now it pinpoints the locations of readers' random celebrity sightings on the Internet, using a Google map of Manhattan.
Publicists say the new feature puts their clients in harm's way by revealing their specific whereabouts.
