NEW YORK – Catch and kill. Checkbook journalism. Secret deals. Friends help friends.
Even by the National Enquirer's standards, the testimony of its former publisher David Pecker in Donald Trump's hush-money trial this week revealed a staggering level of corruption at America's most famous tabloid and will someday be seen because the moment it effectively went under.
“It just has zero credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, editor-in-chief of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever credibility it had, it has been completely damaged by what happened in court this week.”
On Thursday, Pecker was back on the witness stand to inform more concerning the agreement he made to spice up Trump's presidential bid in 2016, tear down his rivals and silence any revelations that might need damaged him.
THE ENQUIRER HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE RISE OF TABLOID CULTURE
Although its stories danced on the sting of credibility, the Enquirer was a cultural fixture, thanks largely to ingenious marketing. As many Americans moved to the suburbs within the Sixties, the tabloid took its place on supermarket checkout shelves, where people could read headlines about UFO abductions or medical miracles while waiting for milk and bread to be packaged for them .
Celebrity news was an everyday feature, and the Enquirer paid sources in Hollywood to learn what stars' publicists wouldn't say. It could have been true. Maybe it just had a touch of truth. It was rarely boring.
When the tabloid paid a mourner to secretly take a photograph of Elvis Presley in his coffin for its front page, that week's edition sold 6.9, in line with the 2020 documentary “Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer.” Millions of times.
Despite all of the ridicule the tabloid received from “serious” journalists, the Enquirer's reporters got down to break some real news. An unforgettable image of married Senator Gary Hart having fun with a tropical vacation with a girl he was dating destroyed a presidential bid and brought politicians into the celebrity world of the Enquirer. The tab was considered for a Pulitzer Prize after it exposed a sex scandal involving U.S. Senator John Edwards within the early 2000s.
During his period of fame within the Nineteen Nineties, Trump was a fixture on the pages and infrequently a source of reports. When Pecker bought the Enquirer in 1999, certainly one of his first calls got here from Trump, who said, “Congratulations – you bought a great magazine,” the previous executive testified this week.
As the documentary “Scandalous” shows, a few of Pecker’s unsavory practices predated his take care of Trump. The Enquirer paid for the story of Gigi Goyette, an actress who claimed she was having an affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger, throwing the prospect of a possible book and movie into doubt. Then there was silence as Schwarzenegger, who denied the affair, ran for governor of California. The agreement became often called “Catch and Kill.”
Pecker said that in a gathering with Trump and attorney Michael Cohen in the summertime of 2015, he laid out how he would help the presidential candidate, a deal that included alleged “catch and kill” agreements with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.
“They were not put in writing,” Pecker testified of his guarantees to Trump. “It was just an agreement between friends.”
Throughout the campaign, National Enquirer headlines made no secret of who the tabloid supported: “Donald Trump: The Man Behind the Legend,” one read. “Donald Trump: Healthiest person ever elected,” read one other.
Steve Coz, a former top editor on the Enquirer, was bowled over by the Trump-promoting covers when he saw them in his neighborhood supermarket in Florida. “This is so foreign to anyone who worked at the National Enquirer,” Coz said within the documentary.
NOT TYPICAL JOURNALISTIC PRACTICES
Cartwright, lured to a job on the Enquirer by his friend Dylan Howard with the promise of breaking stories just like the Edwards scandal, as a substitute found that material about one of the crucial colourful and compromised politicians in recent history was off limits. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton were regularly the targets of unflattering stories; Pecker called it a double victory since it helped Trump and anti-Clinton stories were popular with Enquirer readers.
Even Cartwright said he was surprised to learn in Pecker's testimony what role Cohen played in fabricating strangely false stories about Trump's Republican primary rivals. Ben Carson has been described as a “botched surgeon and a “brain butcher.” Marco Rubio's headlines were a few “love child” and a “cocaine connection.” Ted Cruz allegedly had five secret affairs and his father is claimed to have a connection to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Cartwright remembers wondering with friends on the time what was happening, only to be told that “you sound like a conspiracy theorist.”
The stories were wild, there was no truth to them. But 1000’s of voters saw them, and because the rumors reached the mainstream media, opponents — particularly an indignant Cruz — were forced to deal with them.
“This is the starting point for fake news,” said Cartwright, now a correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter.
It's been years since an Enquirer story made an impression. In 2019, the tabloid published texts alleging an extramarital affair by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – also the owner of the Washington Post, which was a thorn within the side of then-President Trump. But it backfired when Bezos publicly revealed that the Enquirer had threatened to publish damning photos if the Post didn't drop an investigation into Pecker's American Media Inc. Pecker lost his job in 2020 as head of the Enquirer's parent company, which was eventually sold.
Prominent news is widely reported within the media today. TMZ has largely taken on the role of The Enquirer, with aggressive celebrity coverage and a willingness to pay for it with more journalistic rigor. Political chatter can also be easy to seek out online, as is disinformation.
According to the Alliance for Audited Media, the Enquirer averaged 238,000 newsstand sales per week throughout the final six months of the 2016 election 12 months. In the last six months of 2023, average sales were just below 56,500. It limps along: The cover story on its website Thursday was “The Untold Story: Marko Stout's Journey from Obscurity to Art World Phenomenon.”
“It really is a shadow of its former self,” Cartwright said. “David Pecker’s legacy will be that he completely destroyed this tabloid.”
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