SAGWatch News Aggregator Cleared of Wrongdoing

The anonymously run SAGWatch website, which aggregates news about SAG, AFTRA and other Hollywood unions, has long come under fire by members of SAG’s MembershipFirst faction, the now all but defunct group associated with former guild president Alan Rosenberg. They criticize the site for its pro-merger and anti-MembershipFirst stance.

In October, as The Hollywood Reporter reported, anonymous claims surfaced that AFTRA board member David Browde runs the website and that by so doing was in violation of an agreement between SAG and AFTRA that prohibits leaders of each union from disparaging the other union. Browde told THR then that the accusation was false. AFTRA said it would investigate.

On Wednesday, AFTRA released a statement that its outside counsel had concluded an investigation and "found no evidence suggesting any infractions (of the non-disparagement agreement and the union's own confidentiality rules) took place." More.