Britney: Gimme More...Apologies

U.K. magazine retracts so-billed "exclusive" June cover story interview with singer; admits Q&A was culled from previously released press quotes

At least when U.S. tabloids make up exclusive cover stories, they have the good sense not to include direct and easily traceable quotes from the stars themselves. Not so the British and French rags.

The U.K.'s More! magazine has become the latest glossy-paged publication to eat crow and issue an apology, this time to Britney Spears over a June cover story billed as an exclusive one-on-one conversation with the singer.

Instead, the "interview" was more like a greatest-hits collection of every publicly issued statement Spears had delivered over the past year, with such banal revelations as "I'm just not that into going out late at night or going to clubs anymore" and "There are so many things that I am grateful for."

Hardly seems worth the effort, really. Unfortunately, More! couldn't open the door of apology without throwing someone out the window...

And that someone was the article's author.

"More! would like to apologize to our readers and to Britney Spears for having wrongly described the Q&A with Ms. Spears we published in our June 8, 2009 issue as an 'exclusive,' " the magazine said.

"The article was brought to More! by a freelance contributor, Jan Janssen. We now understand that Ms. Spears' quotes were given to the press generally and not exclusively to Jan Janssen. The article was not a More! exclusive as we had been led to believe, nor was it authorized by Ms. Spears. We apologize to Ms. Spears for any distress and damage caused."

But not, we're guessing, for the free publicity.