And the meaning of 'EXCLUSIVE' dives off a cliff

Deadline Hollywood Daily has complained loudly, publicly and frequently over the past couple of years about other outlets "stealing" their scoops, casting its special brand aspersion on the ancient journalistic practice of "following" (which Deadline now does daily -- there's ample proof of that). But that nonstarter of a hypocritical grievance doesn't hold a milkbone to the more recent habit that DHD has developed: claiming EXCLUSIVE on stories very clearly broken elsewhere.

Now, we're all guilty of posting an "exclusive" that someone else got to first -- it happens. The noble thing is to take the tag off, tip your cap and move on. But even when DHD editors learn they've been scooped, they've lately been leaving the dubious EXCLUSIVE tag on their posts.

It started as an anomaly (see sundry blogdogger posts previous) but it's become an irritating pattern, as these three recent examples (below) illustrate. Apparently the pain of extending a simple professional courtesy is just too much to bear?

See for yourself:

This Variety scoop from this morning:

Followed an hour later by:

And this Variety scoop from last week:

Followed 35 minutes later by this (at some point they removed the EXCLUSIVE in favor of BREAKING, but that was only after the Gyllenhaal deal fell apart the following day):

And finally this Variety scoop, from Feb. 29:

Followed by this, more than 40 minutes later: