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Immediately after our exclusive story that executives at Sony attempted to squash an MSNBC.com story about Will Smith's alleged involvement with Scientology ran last night, Defamer received an email from the MSNBC.com news team stating the following: "We have now heard from Sony - furious that someone at msnbc.com is claiming that they asked us to kill the piece." Shortly thereafter, they updated their original story to include a denial that they had ever been contacted by Sony. As any faithful entertainment news follower is well aware, it is standard practice for media big guns to play the denial card as soon as any poor press hits. However, it is important to note that we here at Defamer are standing by the accuracy of our item; we will not be pressured into pulling it down.

While we have no idea whether or not Will Smith is a Scientologist (we have our theories, though), we do know that the prospect of the American public beginning to think that The Fresh Prince might be a Scientologist is enough to make the suits at Sony get nervous. After all, they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into producing, releasing and marketing their big tentpole film for the summer, Hancock; the last thing they want or need are Anonymous protesters picketing the cineplexes over the July 4th weekend when the movie is released. With that in mind, we would just like to reiterate again that the story we ran yesterday was both fair and accurate, and that we will not be pulling it down.

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