Mention
of its name might stir nostalgia among those who used to hold it in contempt,
just because of it represents a bygone analog distribution model. However, the
tabloid journalism it used to practice has practically become the current
industry standard. We do not need to feel nostalgic for The National
Enquirer, because all of reputable competition have joined it at its scandal-mongering
level. With the recent revelations regarding ABC News and the spiking Amy Robach’s Jeffrey Epstein story, it is now clear even the worst practices ascribed
to Enquirer happen at entrenched media operations. Current headlines provide
quite an ironic context to watch Mark Landsman’s Scandalous: The Untold
Story of the National Enquirer, which opens this Friday in New York.
Generoso
Pope Jr. was the son of Pope Sr., the publisher of Il Progresso and a
major figure in the New York Italian American community. He was also reputedly mobbed
up. According to Scandalous, that is where Pope Jr. went to get money to
buy The New York Evening Enquirer, a sleepy New York weekly that mostly
covered horse racing at that point. Pope quickly changed the name to reflect
his national ambitions and started shifting the editorial focus. Initially, it specialized
in an especially grisly brand of crime journalism, but it truly found its
identity and its market with celebrity scandals.
The
former employees (including Judith Regan) heard throughout Scandalous essentially
confirm all our assumptions regarding the tabloid. They very definitely paid
for tips and maintained somewhat looser standards for what newsworthy and “true.”
Their coverage of Gary Hart and O.J. Simpson get called out as the highpoints
in the paper’s history, with justification. However, the Enquirer’s greatest
victory could very well be the photo taken surreptitiously of the deceased Elvis
Presley on view in his casket.
Of
course, Landsman does his best to exploit Trump’s ties to the Enquirer,
using various talking heads to allege the paper spiked stories exposing his infidelities
and personal misadventures in return for consideration of various sorts. Ironically,
there was allegedly a similar arrangement in place for Trump’s sworn enemy,
Arnold Schwarzenegger. At one point, Carl Bernstein looks straight into the camera
and tells viewers with all due seriousness that there is no greater
journalistic sin than deliberately spiking legitimate news stories. So, who
wants to ask Bernstein for a comment on the Amy Robach tape?
In
fact, this is a completely legitimate question, because Scandalous explicitly
suggests spiking stories to protect favored friends and associates is the one
thing that really still differentiates the Enquirer from its
increasingly tabloidish competitors. The entire field might have followed it
into the Simpson morass, but at least there were some things they still wouldn’t
do. Yet, now it seems ABC will also kill stories to protect the people it likes—and
CBS will fire the whistle-blower who expose it.
