Talk:Zach Braff

Braff hitting an alleged 12 year old on Punk'd

Currently the article says:

In Episode 4.3 of the MTV show Punk'd, which aired on March 20, 2005, Braff was filmed yelling at a 12-year-old actor. He unwittingly appeared on the show at the behest of his Scrubs co-star Donald Faison, who pranked Braff by having the 12-year-old spray-paint Braff's new Porsche with fake paint. Braff pursued and caught the 12-year-old actor and punched him in the stomach; this was edited out of the episode.[67][68]

... and cites hollywood.com. Hollywood.com does not say the actor was 12 years old in their voice, but instead quotes Braff:

“I didn’t know and it was so dark… (but) part of the punking was that it was, like, a 12-year-old.

"like" a 12-year-old. I understand the word "like" can serve many purposes, including simple filler, but still, that's not very solid sourcing of the actor actually being 12. Also, the reputation for reliability of hollywood.com is still to be determined... discussions on the reliable sources notice board were inconclusive, with it perhaps leaning towards not using it for BLPs.

In additon, the title of the hollywood.com article is "Zach Braff Busted Beating Up Teen on ‘Punk’d’". 12 years old does not qualify as a "teen".

I did find another article which would tend to cast doubt on the actor being 12. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/punkd_us_5873e3bce4b099cdb0fed2d4 entitled "The Wild And Sometimes Frightening World Of ‘Punk’d’" where it says:

Braff swung at Pinkston a couple times, but the baggy clothes and Elwood’s arms ended up shielding his body. “Zach tried to pummel Rob, but instead pummeled my arm,” Elwood said. “He basically hit my arm as he was trying to hit this kid. He definitely wanted to stomp the ever-living crap out of this kid.”

"Pinkston" is "Rob Pinkston" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Pinkston) who our article says was born January 30, 1988, and our article mentions that Pinkston was the child actor. The episode of Punk'd in question was Episode #4.3, which aired March 20, 2005. That would put the age of the child actor at 17 at time of air.

I realize my calculations are original research, but this is a BLP, and I think given that we are currently using Wikipedia's voice to say Braff beat a 12 year old, I hope you will understand why I think the hollywood.com sourcing is weak, and that we should not mention the age of the child actor at all.

I am going to therefore remove mention of his age from the article until we have more reliable sourcing than a tertiary website like hollywood.com quoting Braff saying he was "like, 12". Marteau (talk) 03:53, 10 December 2017 (UTC)