By David Bauder | Associated Press
NEW YORK — Catch and kill. Checkbook journalism. Secret offers. Friends helping friends.
Even by the National Enquirer’s standards, its former editor David Pecker’s testimony at Donald Trump’s secret trial this week revealed a stunning level of corruption within America’s best-known tabloid and could one day be considered the moment when he actually died.
“He just has no credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, editor of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever credibility he had has been totally damaged by what happened in court this week. »
On Thursday, Pecker was back on the witness stand to reveal more about the arrangements he made to bolster Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, demolish his rivals and silence any revelations that could have harmed him .
THE ENQUIRER HELPED FEED THE RISE OF TABLOID CULTURE
Although its stories stretched to the limits of credulity, the Enquirer was a cultural staple, thanks in large part to brilliant marketing. As many Americans moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, the tabloid took up residence on supermarket checkout shelves, where people could read headlines about UFO abductions or medical miracles while they waited let their milk and bread be bagged.
Celebrity news was a must, and the Enquirer paid sources in Hollywood to find out what the stars’ publicists wouldn’t say. Maybe it was true. There may be just a hint of truth. It was rarely boring.
When the tabloid paid a mourner to secretly take a photo of Elvis Presley in his casket for its cover, this week’s issue sold 6.9 million copies, according to the documentary 2020, “Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer.”
Despite all the ridicule the tabloid received from “serious” journalists, Enquirer reporters hustled and reported real news. A memorable photo of married Sen. Gary Hart enjoying a tropical vacation alongside a woman he was involved with destroyed a presidential bid and brought politicians into the Enquirer’s celebrity world. This memo was considered for a Pulitzer Prize after exposing a sex scandal involving U.S. Senator John Edwards in the early 2000s.
Back when he was famous in the 1990s, Trump was a fixture on its pages and often a source of information. When Pecker bought the Enquirer in 1999, one of his first calls was from Trump, who said, “Congratulations, you’ve bought a great magazine,” the former executive testified this week.
As the documentary “Scandalous” illustrates, some of Pecker’s unsavory practices predated his deal with Trump. The Enquirer paid for the story of Gigi Goyette, an actress who claimed to have had an affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger, hinting at the possibility of a potential book and movie. Then he remained silent while Schwarzenegger, who denied the affair, ran for governor of California. This arrangement became known as “catch and kill.”
Pecker said that during a summer 2015 meeting with Trump and lawyer Michael Cohen, he explained how he would help the presidential candidate, an agreement that included so-called “catch and kill” agreements. » with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.
“They weren’t put in writing,” Pecker testified about his promises to Trump. “It was just an agreement between friends.”
Throughout the campaign, the National Enquirer’s headlines made no secret of the tabloid’s support: “Donald Trump: the man behind the legend,” read one of them. “Donald Trump: The Healthiest Individual Ever Elected” was another.
The Trump-boosting covers baffled former Enquirer editor Steve Coz when he saw them at his neighborhood supermarket in Florida. “It’s so foreign to anyone who’s worked at the National Enquirer,” Coz said in the documentary.
NOT TYPICAL JOURNALISTIC PRACTICES
Cartwright, lured to a job at the Enquirer by his friend Dylan Howard with the promise of breaking stories like the Edwards scandal, instead found that reporting on one of the most colorful and compromised politicians in the recent history were prohibited. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton were frequent targets of unflattering stories; Pecker called it a double victory because it helped Trump and the anti-Clinton stories were popular with Enquirer readers.
Even Cartwright said he was surprised to learn in Pecker’s testimony about Cohen’s role in fabricating eerily false stories about Trump’s primary Republican rivals. Ben Carson has been described as a “clumsy surgeon and a “brain butcher.” Marco Rubio’s headlines referred to a “love child” and a “cocaine connection.” Ted Cruz allegedly had five secret affairs and his father was allegedly involved with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Cartwright remembers wondering with friends at the time what was going on, only to be told that “you sound like a conspiracy theorist.”
The stories were crazy, with nothing true. But thousands of voters saw them, and when the rumors hit the mainstream media, opponents — including an angry Cruz — were forced to address them.
“That’s where fake news starts,” said Cartwright, now a correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s been years since an Enquirer story had an impact. In 2019, the tabloid published texts reporting an extramarital affair by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also owner of the Washington Post, a thorn in 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 stop an investigation into Pecker’s American Media Inc. Pecker lost his job running the company parent of Enquirer in 2020, and it was eventually sold. .
Celebrity news is widely spread in the media today. TMZ has largely taken on the Enquirer’s role with aggressive celebrity coverage and a willingness to pay for it, with more journalistic rigor. Political speech is also easy to find on the web, as is misinformation.
The Enquirer averaged 238,000 newsstand sales each week during the final six months of the 2016 election year, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Over the last six months of 2023, its sales averaged just under 56,500 units. He’s limping forward: The lead story on his website Thursday was “The Untold Story: Marko Stout’s Journey from Obscurity to Art World Phenomenon.”
“He really is a shadow of his former self,” Cartwright said. “David Pecker’s legacy will be that he totally destroyed this tabloid.”
David Bauder writes about media for the Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder
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