March 5, 2022 • 50 mins
Having started as an egalitarian answer to 19th-century newspapers, tabloids came to peddle shock and sleaze. They've cleaned up a bit, but they remain the world's guilty pleasure. Learn more about the fascinating history of tabloids with Chuck and Josh in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody. Have you ever been followed around by a
person to the camera taking pictures of you and your
family and your children, and then publishing them in a
newspaper or a weekly rag. Well, that happens to people,
doesn't happen to me, Probably doesn't happen to you. But
we're the lucky ones. But if you're celebrity, and I
know you kind of sign up for this. It's not
(00:21):
great to be followed around by tabloid photographers and be
splashed across those tabloid magazines. And this is all about
tabloid's from how tabloid's work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:48):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh,
and this is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast.
It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
sound smell. It will just called it Smellow rama be
(01:10):
and grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm grumpy. Jerry.
Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at each other
when I came in here. No, Jerry was mad at
me for being mad at her, which doesn't count. It's
just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm not grumpy.
It's just head legitimate. Everyone's scripy. So chuck. Yes, I
(01:33):
want to tell you about a great American hero, William
kat No okay uh. Many years ago, in the wilds
of I wish I could remember where he was found Mississippi,
a little guy known as bat Boy was captured. He
(01:56):
was caught on a rooftop during a flood in Mississippi,
and the authorities seized him and UM took him into
their care. He became a ward of the state. That
makes sense because bat boys are known to go to
higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he did, true to form.
Uh so uh. Bat Boy at first he didn't like
this captivity UM, but eventually he kind of became something
(02:19):
of a patriot by UM volunteering to go search for
Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives UM in
the caves of Afghanistan. The reason bat Boy was so
good at it is because he was raising caves half
bat half boy names UM. He wasn't able to find
(02:41):
Bin laden, but he still returned to the U S
a hero after a long, long flight because he just
flew himself. Of course. And we know of bat boys
exploits thanks to a little newspaper known as The Weekly
World News. Have you heard of this? Two things? I
used to subscribe to The Weekly World. Yeah, for like
(03:04):
a year in high school, me and my buddy rad
did because it was fun Radcliffe, Radford. And two. I
didn't realize that bat Boy they continued his exploits. I
think bat Boy sold a lot of papers for well,
I knew he did, but I didn't know. I didn't
know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm glad to
know that he was fighting the terrorists. Yes he did,
(03:26):
he tried to. I don't know if he was successful.
At least he went equipped more than with just a sword. Um.
But yeah, so bat Boy was a prominent character, I guess.
And The Week, which also bills itself as the world's
only reliable newspaper. Yeah, that little tagline or whatever. That's great. Yeah,
(03:49):
it's not around anymore in print. Yeah, I think I
remember a bit shutting down and being sort of sad
it's online, I guess. Yeah. In two thousand and eight,
it moved too and moved online. Yeah, so really every
aspect of that story from this outrageous UM claim that
the bat Boy was captured and sent to Afghanistan, to
UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's most reliable,
(04:14):
the world's only reliable newspaper to it's shutting down and
going online because of massive profit losses after being purchased
by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The Weekly World
News is a perfect analogy for the course of tabloids
over the last like twenty years as a whole. Yeah,
and we're gonna dig into that. Um. I think it's funny.
(04:37):
I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
I guess they figured if we're just going to be
making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid,
I mean, it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, well,
(04:58):
we might as well just say that in the thing,
get it. Yes, And one of their apparently one of
their editors is quoted as saying, I could only find
one source for this quote, so I don't know how
true it is. It could be made up, which would
be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
whole thing. But um, he said, if our if our
readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
(05:22):
were well aware. That's great and it is an extreme example.
But there are there are some aspects of the weekly
World News that do fit the bill of the of
a standard tabure. Um. So I mean, let's talk about it.
What is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start at
the beginning or should we just talk about a little
bit then do the history? Do you want to do
the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the history first,
(05:42):
because positive that we don't practice. So I did see, Um,
there was one slight error. This is an ed Grabanowski article,
which are always great. But did you see this other
etymology for the word tabloid with the pill company No um.
In the late eighteen hundreds, apparently, um Burrows, Welcome and
(06:02):
Company was a pharmaceutical company in England. They produced at
the time like medicines were all like BC powder and
good he's powdered. They all powdered, and he I think
was the first one to make into to a pill
by compressing the powder, and he called it a tabloid
of cocaine. Yeah, it probably was. And um that that
(06:24):
word became to mean anything figuratively, that was a small
dose of anything. So the word tabloid actually became came
before I believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, uh,
the physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like
the origin of life on Earth comes from another planet,
(06:46):
but really, where did the origin of life begin? Right?
It doesn't answer the question. It's the same thing like, okay,
so maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then
it was associated with newspapers that the tabloid paper um
is printed on a smaller, more compact version of the
normal newspaper newsprint called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid
(07:10):
is a smaller, more compact version the broadsheet is longer
and wider um and then the tabloid were usually printed
on the smaller paper, hence the word. Yeah. So at
first it was a pill, then it became the size
of the paper, and then later on it just became
um the style of the paper and size, but really
(07:33):
the style. But tabloids, as were explaining them, are basically
like um. They are also commonly referred to as rags
as UM gutter public. Yeah, they're gossip sheets, whatever it's
it's basically it's a it's a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded
newspaper and um tabloids. One of the ways that they
(07:57):
exist and always have existed is in compare us into
a quote, legitimate newspapers. So like originally newspapers that say,
like the beginning the early nineteenth century, they were extremely stuffy,
they were extremely expensive. They were like six cents per
which was like half a day's pay for the average labor.
(08:18):
Really dry. Man. If you ever read these old New
York Times articles, there's like they just really just you know,
they lay out the facts and then say the end
exactly like the AP used to do until a few
years ago. The AP always did that. It was sort
of straight who, what, when, how, where and why the
old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a quote
(08:42):
in there and that was it. UM. And so out
of this I guess kind of boredom and a need
for the working class to be able to, you know,
get their news too, because I couldn't afford it came.
The predecessors were tabloids called the penny press, so they
were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
stories from just these boring facts, political stories, business stories,
(09:07):
that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
And they changed the style of writing sentences for shorter paragraphs,
for shorter way more emotion. It was. It was designed
for that, like listen to the triumph of this family
over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what we
see now in mainstream newspapers. Exactly. Yes, a lot, a
(09:30):
lot of our mainstream UM media owes quite a bit
to the evolution of tabloids. And there's actually a point
where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
newspapers this interplay where tabloids almost kind of break ground,
take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
(09:52):
it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
you know, we're the upstanding publication exactly just the sky
right I'm discussed by it all. Um. Yellow journalism came
about in the era of William Randolph Hurst with his
New York Journal later called The New York Journal American,
and he was the first person in the United States,
(10:15):
at least, because I think in England it even started
out before us. But I'm not mistaken. In England, I
think they were kind of like the birth of some
of the more tabloid style writing. But in America William
Randolph Hurst did with all of a sudden he started
doing some celebrity stuff and some murderer and little sensational
(10:36):
gore here and there, and he found that it sold
really well up until the Depression, when nothing sold really well.
Um pick up after the Depression when a very uh
monumental figure in tabloid history named Janetta Janetoso Pope or
Gene Pope Gene Pope jr. Um, He bought a Hurst
(10:58):
paper called The New York and Choir for seventy five grand,
changed it to tabloid size, started uh printing you know,
you know, stuff that he he figured people like to
stare at a car crash, So he was actually inspired
literally by seeing people like jockeying to see the blood
and the gore in a car crash and thought, wow,
(11:19):
people really are disgusting and crazy, so I'm going to
give them what they want. And he did remember the
crime scene photography episode we talked about we gi um
he he and he sold a lot of stuff to
Jeane Pope. Um, he printed a lot of his like
gory crimes photos. What's his name, right, Lewis Felig, I think,
(11:41):
but he went by W E G EIGI Interesting. Yeah,
so I said it again. Um yeah, I was cueing
like the Executive Orders episode how many times, like I'll
bunch you know why because it was super interesting. Um.
So he starts selling a lot of papers um, based
on this new style. And then a guy named Rupert Murdoch,
(12:04):
who you may have heard of, who saw or prove
that you could actually have pretty wide circulation um, and
began selling News of the World in England millions of
copies sex scandals. And then the Pope said, you know what,
if he can sell millions and millions of copies, so
can I let me changed the name to the National Enquirer. Boom, Right,
(12:27):
the National Enquirer was born. But um, the Inquirer is
we know it still wasn't born yet. It was the
thing they were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and
lesbianism and like horrible acts of violence, posthumous violence. There
is this one headline um about a team ripping the
head off of a corpse to get at its gold teeth,
(12:50):
and always with the gory crime scene photos like the
pulp comics we're doing too. Yeah, very much. It was
just very tawdry. It's um, I mean if the stuff
uh and the inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was
just like it's not fathom model. But the reason it's
not is again because of Gene Pope. So he had
a lot of competition U and not just he, but
(13:14):
the whole industry was facing a big problem in that
news stands were starting to dry. So Jane Pope came
up with an idea. He's like supermarkets. Everybody goes to supermarkets.
I need to get in there now. I stand in
the line at the checkout stand, right. But he knew
like there was no way that any any respectable supermarket
was going to sell his tabloid, his rag that the required.
(13:36):
So he cleaned the thing up right, he um added
way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
and his News of the World, and um added way
more celebrity stuff sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know, um,
this stuff he was talking about before that was just
really it was more like a like a the Senator
(13:58):
got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And there's this
guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the for Vanity Fair,
and he wrote this article called us Confidential. It was
in the June two thousand two issue of Vanity Fair.
It was about this and about that transition going from
you know, the crime scene photography to um astrology overnight
(14:21):
so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um,
the Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took. We got
to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
and celebrity sex scanals. And it wasn't even cleaning up
attacked that much. It's not like you said, we're going
(14:42):
to become the you know, New York Times. No, but
that's why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand
in line at a supermarket checkout line. It's because in
the nineteen sixties Jeane Pope was like, we got to
get in the supermarkets. I think people either read these
or they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
(15:04):
Like no one just says like, let me watch a
little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
but I think a lot of people are guilty of
picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
you know what they do now, and of course we're
going to get to this, might as well bring it up.
They look at People magazine and US Weekly because they
(15:25):
have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
unquote respectable thing to pick up and read. Even now,
come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have.
It's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
actually you can thank the Star for that. Um Star
used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid, right, and it
(15:48):
went over to the glossy format at some point. I
think that may be the late nineties, and um it,
it married those two things, glossyful magazine format with tabloid,
and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
we've already got the glossy magazine part. Let's just start
doing the tabloid thing. Yeah, I mean what people have,
(16:09):
I mean legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
Malibu and look at this person, and look at that person,
and who wore it better? Plastics versus asters? Yeah, exactly,
stuff like that, who wore it better? I know somebody
who's been reading people. Yeah, when they have the two
(16:31):
ladies with the same dress, so mean, especially when it's
like eight two to eight teens now, I know, especially
when it's like, you know, it's just means. Sometimes I'm
gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll be like, a
who were it better? Kevin Smith or podcaster Chuck Bryant.
People go, I guess Kevin Smith, because I've never heard
of this other guy. It's the same guy. It's the
(16:53):
same dude anyway. Alright, so, um, that's pretty much the
(17:26):
quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States, at
least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're lousy
with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading edge
of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let get
to that, all right. So before we go onto tabloid
stories and how they get these stories, we should point
(17:46):
out that the National Choir, the Star of the Globe,
the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're all purchased
by American Media, Inc. Like all all of those just
snapped them all up, basically, just goout on the show. Now,
every big tabloid in the United States was purchased by
this one company. And um, yeah, I think that's never
(18:07):
a good thing. Or maybe that's just me being it,
you know. Well that's the funny thing, like the title
of this sidebars, they control everything you read unless you
don't read any of those things. So, um, the the
am I, actually they're the reason the Weekly World News
shut down. Um, they were like, okay, as things losing money.
Am I posted a hundred and sixty million dollar loss
(18:30):
in two thousand and six and was facing like a
billion dollars in debt to bad Boy had to go. Yeah,
bad Boy went to the internet. Yeah that makes sense.
That's where bad Boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this.
What what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
it's tabloids like pornographer, you know when you see it, right,
it's tough to define. That's not um entirely the case.
(18:52):
There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among tabloids that
make a tabloid tabloid? Agreed, So what are there? Well
Ed points out here something really important. The key to
a tabloid story is not that it be true, just
that someone has said that it's true, and they latch
onto that person. And as long as they say, you know,
(19:14):
attribute these quotes to this person, then they can't be
held accountable. And that person is frequently cited as an
expert and a close friend. Sure, I mean, if somebody
it's all the way you present the story, if the
if you're saying, if your whole story is all about
how this person said something, yeah, it's not really about
(19:36):
the story. The story is still there, but you're focusing
on this person. It's like the the rule of the
of the tabloid industry. It's kind of a trick though,
because very much you're tricking people into thinking you're reading
about a story about Brandjelina. In fact, you're reading a
story about a former made that worked for Branchlina and
what they think is true, right, Or some crazy person
(20:00):
who has nothing to do with bran Angelina who like
just um, maybe saw one of them in a coffee
shop and like, notice they didn't tip or something like that. Bam,
there's your story. Um. Also, like we said that, they
like to add experts, and but the experts are in
no way, shape or form qualified in a lot of ways.
(20:21):
They have no credentials, they're not vetted. It's more say, like, um,
the example Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast, Right,
if somebody spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot,
researching bigfoot, there there's no institute out there to qualify them,
to give them credentials. But you could reasonably make a
(20:43):
case of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right.
The thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star
or the weekly World News is not going to the
trouble of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so
and so says that there's a bunch of these things
out and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
(21:05):
get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop
and they will say did she look that? They would
say maybe something like yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
and they would say did she look strung out and
that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
she sort of looked like that, And then all of
a sudden, that's the quote because witnesses say she looked
(21:28):
strung out and like she had not eaten for days,
and uh, all they have to do is say yes,
exactly yes, or like would you say this? And if
the prison says yes and you just said that. Another
hallmark of tabloids is making a huge deal out of
something I guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah,
(21:50):
and like actually looking through other newspapers to find some
quasi interesting story and then blowing it up into possibly
a front page feature. Um, just by getting into this story,
really interviewing a lot of people involved um, and then
maybe throwing an expert or something like that, and just
basically making a lot a lot of hay out of
(22:12):
something very um kind of negligible. UM. And this by
adding a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do
you think about this? What do you think about that?
It takes it from being about the story, right, like
a UM man saved a goat from a burning building
(22:32):
to what these people think about this man and his goat?
And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
you mean, maybe who knows? As somebody said it, then
they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh.
Celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
(22:56):
all kinds of informants from um secure people who had
worked for them, or who worked at venues where they
might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
and uh, I remember we shot you ever heard of
Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
(23:19):
gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like entertainment tonight.
But that's how she made her living. And she was
like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
a commercial at her house one time in l a
and she was there hanging out and uh, I was like,
you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
(23:41):
and his secret sex addiction and and she was she
always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me
she had a list a rollodex of people on the
bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
big news, and it's um, that's pretty much standard. Like
(24:01):
you were saying. There, there's this guy named um Paul
McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
and um, you know Dentel Elliott. He was he was
Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
(24:25):
and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin
and after he died. Um, she took like a big
turn for the worst, and this cop tipped off I
think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
(24:46):
want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
and everything. Well, she ended up killing herself and he
now says, like, you know, I take responsibility for that,
which is meaningless, but um yeah he The all started
(25:10):
with a cop knowing about this and then tipping off
the reporters. So sad cops are not immune to this
kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh. Another
(25:53):
way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um,
from what I've gathered, did you're either you fall into
three categories. You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You
either are lucky enough and are smart enough to kind
of be low profile and you're not really a subject
of table tabloids. There's a lot of big stars you've
(26:15):
never seen the tabloids Harrison for yeah uh. Or number
three is you play ball a little bit, which means,
you know what, I'll give you a little information here
and there. I'll leak out some stuff here and there.
If you play nice with me, I'll play ball with you.
Maybe I'll let you know, like what restaurant I'll be
(26:35):
coming out of one night you can photograph me. Give
you your little time and um. Sometimes the movie studios
a leak stuff to get get up a little press.
They did that a lot a lot back in the day,
but it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic
relationship between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
(26:55):
It's position through things like just basically you're a star
because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
for your cellulite, But what if someone picks up the
magazine they're like, oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad,
how sad, but at the same time I feel better
(27:18):
about myself exactly. Um So, I guess one of the
ways that you stay in the tabloids is through having
your picture made. As we stay here in the South,
a group of people known collectively as paparazzi, and they
actually I found out, are named after a paparazz so photographer.
(27:42):
You didn't know that named Paparazzo with a capital P.
He was a character in Um Fellini Fellini's ladulce Vita
that's right movie, and um apparently they were already extant,
but they got their name through this character. But even
in they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the seventies again
(28:05):
thanks to Jane Pope um, that they really became the
kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today. And
it was all because Jeane Pope was obsessed with Jackie
Oh and Aristotle or and he would pay so much
money for anything on them that people that the photographers
were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
(28:28):
of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
Gene Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
in Greece and in in Europe. UM, and that that
still is connected to this day, to the death of
Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased by
paparazzi on motorcycles. Yeah, very sad, but that's all generoso
(28:53):
Pope jr. Um. I'll bet that guy wore huge black
glass thick ones like Robert Jernier at the end of
See you know God, that's for great Um. Supposedly Felini too,
I dug this up. Took the word from an Italian
word that described the buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified,
but he said in an interview in Time magazine in
(29:14):
the seventies that he's like, yeah, I always just associate
it with something buzzing around you and in your way, Like, well,
that's paparazzi. Um. And there's that movie too, Paparazzi. Is
that what I was called from two thousan four? Yeah,
with the dude, uh what's his face goes back and
beats up Coalhauser. Yeah. Did you see it? No, No,
I ran across it on IMDb today. It's not bad
(29:35):
at all. Um. It's also it could very easily be
based on the life of Alec Baldwin. Uh yeah, sure, yeah, yeah,
because there's I think the categories you were describing, Um,
the people who are just so big that they can't
keep a low profile, but they also don't want or
need that that the tabloids on them. But I also
(30:00):
very much gotten the impression it's like there's a lot
of people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
at all. Yeah, it's a it's a tough thing. And
because there are people plenty, like you're saying, like plenty
of people out there who are big stars, but you
never see anything about him in the tabloids. Is because
they just stay out of it. They stay away from it,
(30:21):
you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think of one. I mean,
there's so many. That's probably why I can't think of it.
But like Harrison Ford is a good example, I guess,
except when he started dating cliss to Flockhart, they were
they were in the tabloids a lot. But I also
suspect like most of that stuff was all very pleasant,
like hand holding things so yeah, but she was in
the tabloids a lot because of her weight, so that
fed into that, you know, like, maybe she'll be happy
(30:44):
and eat again now that she has Harrison Ford, you know, yeah,
he's just like eat this, eat that too. Here, eat
this all right, let's talk about let's talk about the law. Yeah,
because this was really interesting, I thought, because the first
thing you think with the rest of it was not
(31:04):
interesting at all. No, I thought. I thought this was
super interesting though, because the first thing I think of
is why aren't these people suing every day? Suing these tabloids.
Some try, some do, some have been successful for a while.
For the early tabloids, ones like um oh, what were
they called, like Confidential I think was one of the
(31:24):
early tabloids. Um, like the tatler Um, they're just whatever
stupid name about not about airing dirty laundry. That was
the name of some pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties.
Dirty laundry was probably one of them, I'll bet um.
And they got away with that stuff because well, for
(31:46):
two reasons. This guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote
I watched a wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty
much this definitive history of the tabloids. And he's got
his bona fides because he was an edit her for
the National Enquirer, right. Um. And he said, there's two
reasons in the fifties and sixties. One, if you were
a legitimate star, these things were so in the gutter
(32:10):
that the stoop to suing them was problematic. In one,
it was the attention that lawsuit would attract because the
regular press was gonna start talking about it, would make
you look as bad as well, it would draw a
lot more attention to the original story. And then the
second thing is that even if you want that publisher
doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
(32:30):
Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert
Murdoch all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
I think Jeane Pope took the Inquirer from like fifteen
thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
peak in the eighties. Um. And so suddenly they did
have deep pockets and things changed. And um. Carol Burnett
(32:53):
kind of still to this day stands as like a
bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids. As far
as the law goes, Yeah, she sued in uh after
nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
(33:15):
She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
was blitzed at this restaurant and she yeah, he's a
(33:38):
big fan, probably, And she sued in one one point
six million dollars, which was and we'll find out here
in a second. This is one of the hallmarks of
their litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion to day,
(34:01):
I think, uh, And then um, it was reduced by
an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
kind of suits, and then it was settled out of court.
So I would imagine for even less than that, UM,
but it was still was a big deal. It was
the first time really that like a major star was
able to win a defamation lawsuit against the tabloid. But
(34:23):
it was one of the I don't want to say
it was one of the only times. It was one
of the very few times, especially if you are going
on the premise of all the people who want to
sue the tabloids and don't actually bring a suit because
things have changed now now the tabloids have these reputations
for being extremely fearsome litigators, where like, if you want
(34:44):
to sue them, you thought that story that ticked you
off was bad, They're going to get anything they can
and they're going to do it through the courts. So
like when Aretha Franklin or no um oh Elsa Taylor, Yes,
when she tried to sue I think the Inquirer, or
when she did see the Inquirer, the Inquirer's lawyers tried
to subpoena all of her medical records for the past
(35:07):
thirty years. So they go after everything. They try to
drag your life into the spotlight to make it like
really not worth your while to sue them. Yet it's
the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
York Times article. H Vincent Chifo, Everyone's Italian um. Everybody
has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
(35:27):
scorpion defense, which is, uh, you don't attack a scorpion
because you will get stung. Um. Aside from not the
not the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's
pretty straightforward. I guess do they need to be complex?
But you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's
the spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
(35:48):
don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
up on or been pooped on. That's what they should use.
Because the scorpion can only do one thing. To year
old can humiliate you in a number of ways. Have
you ever heard So there's this whole thing that like
scorpions commit suicide if you set them on fire by
stinging themselves. Really and apparently there's a lot of like
(36:09):
YouTube videos out there people like doing this with scorpions,
like sting them on fire, and then the scorpion will
like jump about and like sting itself and eventually die. Well,
I'll be trying to put the fire out. They found
that this, They found that that scorpions are almost entirely
immune to their own venom, and that really all this
is just a reaction of being burned alive. They're like
(36:31):
trying to like they're flailing about, and one of the
flails is like they're they're stingers moving and sometimes it
stings itself. So it appears to dumb kids who set
scorpions on fire that scorpions committing suicide terrible. Isn't that awful?
That's a great tangent though, thanks me, all right, don't
burn animals or insects of any kind, kids, It's just mean.
(36:51):
That's exactly means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, Um, you
have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
only that what they printed was false, but that they
knowingly printed information they knew was false. Because it's got
to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
(37:13):
just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed, slander
is stated with your mouth. These are the two differences
or I guess you could blink it out with your eyes.
That's true. Um, So, basically the scorpion defense and then
the delays. The first thing they're gonna do is start
(37:36):
filing motions to delay, to delay, to spend a lot
of money, a lot of money. So and if you
think about it, there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah,
it's your reputation. So a star who has a bunch
of money says, I have a bunch of money, and
I'm really mad at these guys, and i want to
teach them a lesson, So I'm going to soothe them,
and that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids
(37:58):
trying to make it not worth your all, that you'll
drop it because you don't really need this money. You're
looking for a judgment and hopefully you'll get bored. Well
in the tabloids don't care. Even if they drag this
thing out in print a retraction six months later, no
one remembers. No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well,
six months later, that's a it's a well put because
(38:21):
apparently part of the judgment of some of these and
in successful suits is that you can't write about um
the star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they'll
like cut a deal sometimes and say, you know what,
I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
the next year. And then they put on their calendar
Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
(38:42):
effing with him again and UM. Another way that tabloids
stay out of court is most of their UM articles
are read screened by an attorney or attorneys. They have
a retainer, so each article it's printed and it comes
to this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
(39:07):
legal expert. Yea, you you really don't have a case
if you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
They want to walk right up to the line of
libel and stop there. And they're pretty good, and you're
in ate on it, and then you're in ate on it,
and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
(39:28):
this is not libelous, prove it, spend spend half a
million dollars trying to prove this, and some people do,
like Aretha Franklin. I think settled Tom Cruise Schwarzenegger and
Katie Kate Cruise and one did she win because Katie
Holmes just filed in March. She is she settled for
(39:50):
a donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
She did it just this past March. She filed suit
against him for this one cover um like, yeah, bags
under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem why
she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
(40:14):
on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also include,
you know, stuff against Scientology because Travolta just had the big,
little supposed tawdry affairs here in Georgia. And then I
(40:40):
guess another homework that's not really in um it's not
really in the article, but I think you can make
a pretty strong case is that sometimes a lot of
times the tabloid gets things right. Yeah, but the the
way that they do it often is very much unethical
(41:02):
and immoral as far as um the standards of the
press is concerned and that's what Rupert what's been going
on with Rupert Murdoch like UM Parliament, like a parliamentary
UM panel basically said you're not fit to run news
corps any longer because this scandal is so huge. With
the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't remember
(41:25):
what episode we talked about it in, but there was
the girl who was kidnapped and like the News of
the World writers were hacking into her UM voicemail and
then deleting them and so the police thought she was
still alive and it was possibly affecting the course of
the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
(41:46):
people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
four thousands, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller,
Steve Coogan of UM for our Party people and Tristan
Shandy UM. Some people have already won. But for the
(42:08):
most part it's UM. These people aren't gonna get any
any damage is awarded. It's basically just no. News of
the World is shut down now. But it was out
of hand and now they're they're showing that they were
also hacking email, which great Britain has this kind of
um this this computer theft law now which makes email
(42:28):
hacking way worse than phote and hacking. So if that
opens up to be a big thing, there's people are
actually gonna start doing time for it. Yeah, that's what
I say. But like I was saying, sometimes they get
things right. They do um. Over the years, we'll mention
a few O. J. Simpson case the National Enquiry, and
it seems like it's generally the Inquirer that that sort
(42:49):
of scoops the legit ones. It's never like the Star. Yes,
you know, so the National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial,
the uh story about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah,
they scooped the story of the dealer that sold him
a knife similar to the murder weapon. I guess knife
(43:10):
dealers the way they scooped the shoe story. Remember there
were bloody footprints. I thought this was awesome. They really
went to town to because there was a Bruno Molly
bloody footprint at the scene. And O. J. Simpson said,
I don't, I don't. I've never owned a pair of
shoes like that, and they went back and found footage
of him from like wearing them on the field, like
(43:34):
reporting yeah, and proved that yes, indeed he did have
those shoes. And he's like, oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh.
Bill Cosby's kid Ennis. Remember when he was killed. The
inquiry offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for information, and
that actually led to somebody coming forward and giving the
information that led to the capturing of the killer. That's right,
(43:57):
Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah. In two thousand one, he
Um came out and was like, oh, yeah, I guess
he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart when he
was running for president, I remember this well. He was
on the monkey business down in Miami with what was
(44:18):
her name, Donna Rice. UM's a funny photo when you
look at it now. He I haven't seen it. I
don't think. She's just like sitting on his lap and
he's just got a big grin on his face and
he's got a T shirt that says monkey shines grew
And it was it was all over the place at
the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
was because of this this Um picture in the inquiry,
(44:40):
they scooped everybody on it and Russia Limball, Yeah, my
favorite drug addict that was exposed, Rush Limball. Yeah. I
remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
I don't know how many a day, but he bought
apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
(45:02):
eighty pills a day, just so I remember hearing it
was like, how is he alive or even not a
standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
But again, so there there could be it could have
come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
from um yeah, they could have um, they could have
(45:24):
gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes loose, looser
ethics than maybe again A New York Times reporter, Um,
so tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned um, at the peak,
the National Choir was selling about five million copies in circulation.
(45:48):
Now all of the leading ones in the United States
combined sell about five point four million, so they've really
gone down. In One of the reasons why is because
they were so successful it mainstream media became much more
tabloid e and tabloids became much less, much less different.
(46:10):
The field of competition increased. Yeah, and basically everyone was
kind of doing similar stuff now. And they point out
the article during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because
stuff you were seen on CNN and was just as
salacious as anything you would read in the Star. And
again it's like the mainstream media kind of took a
cue from tabloids, as they have so many other times.
(46:34):
They were so pissed off about that. With the Clinton thing,
they were probably just like, let's let's make up some stuff.
Let's like what if he used a cigar? And they
were like, yeah, exactly, it was all true. Yeah with Clinton, man,
those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's chuck. Uh.
(47:00):
If you want to learn more about tabloids and see
a picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type
in tabloids T A B L O I D S
in the search bar at how stuff works dot com,
which means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me. It's
Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina,
(47:23):
m conducting research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship.
I wanted to let you know that your podcast serves
a great resource for English learners in other countries. Um.
I've been introducing your podcast to students and adults I
meet who are interested in furthering their English and learning
more about US culture. Yeah, little scary too, Um. The
(47:44):
idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
Your podcast is providing a fun and am in a
way for students here to practice listening to different English accents, um,
(48:05):
to try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes,
to learn new vocabulary. Why I feel a lot of
heat all of a sudden, um, And to become more
informed on the various issues you discuss. The idea of
people listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge.
Is part is a part of us culture that I
am proud to share and thank you very much for
(48:25):
that spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela Hartley, it's
very nice, thank you very much for that. We're becoming
a cult like figures like Rodriguez. Who there's this like
singer songwriter from I think the late sixties, early seventies
and he just went by the name Rodriguez and released
a couple of albums that is totally flopped here and um,
(48:47):
he just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that
in South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just
incredible status overly and everyone wondered what happened to him,
and finally years later he found out, like he's like
a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
documentary that just came out about the whole time. It
(49:07):
sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary, but
it sounds like a feature film, like something someone would
make up. I saw a movie like that, you mean,
I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
it was very much like that where the one of
the producers afterwards of the Q and it was like
it was he was asked if they were going to
(49:29):
turn it into like a feature film. Then he was like,
we can't. Like there's just too many it's too outlandish
that if you fictionalized it, people would be like, this
is stupid. Why did you Why did you make these choices?
I want to see it. Yeah you should. It's very good, awesome. UM, okay,
if you have a doc recommenentary a documentary recommendation, so
(49:49):
I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a doc you wreck,
thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
is that correct, docu wreck? Because I think I've seen
that written before. Really Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
(50:11):
you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hello, everybody. Have you ever been followed around by a
person to the camera taking pictures of you and your
family and your children, and then publishing them in a
newspaper or a weekly rag. Well, that happens to people,
doesn't happen to me, Probably doesn't happen to you. But
we're the lucky ones. But if you're celebrity, and I
know you kind of sign up for this. It's not
(00:21):
great to be followed around by tabloid photographers and be
splashed across those tabloid magazines. And this is all about
tabloid's from how tabloid's work. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:48):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh,
and this is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast.
It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
sound smell. It will just called it Smellow rama be
(01:10):
and grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm grumpy. Jerry.
Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at each other
when I came in here. No, Jerry was mad at
me for being mad at her, which doesn't count. It's
just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm not grumpy.
It's just head legitimate. Everyone's scripy. So chuck. Yes, I
(01:33):
want to tell you about a great American hero, William
kat No okay uh. Many years ago, in the wilds
of I wish I could remember where he was found Mississippi,
a little guy known as bat Boy was captured. He
(01:56):
was caught on a rooftop during a flood in Mississippi,
and the authorities seized him and UM took him into
their care. He became a ward of the state. That
makes sense because bat boys are known to go to
higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he did, true to form.
Uh so uh. Bat Boy at first he didn't like
this captivity UM, but eventually he kind of became something
(02:19):
of a patriot by UM volunteering to go search for
Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives UM in
the caves of Afghanistan. The reason bat Boy was so
good at it is because he was raising caves half
bat half boy names UM. He wasn't able to find
(02:41):
Bin laden, but he still returned to the U S
a hero after a long, long flight because he just
flew himself. Of course. And we know of bat boys
exploits thanks to a little newspaper known as The Weekly
World News. Have you heard of this? Two things? I
used to subscribe to The Weekly World. Yeah, for like
(03:04):
a year in high school, me and my buddy rad
did because it was fun Radcliffe, Radford. And two. I
didn't realize that bat Boy they continued his exploits. I
think bat Boy sold a lot of papers for well,
I knew he did, but I didn't know. I didn't
know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm glad to
know that he was fighting the terrorists. Yes he did,
(03:26):
he tried to. I don't know if he was successful.
At least he went equipped more than with just a sword. Um.
But yeah, so bat Boy was a prominent character, I guess.
And The Week, which also bills itself as the world's
only reliable newspaper. Yeah, that little tagline or whatever. That's great. Yeah,
(03:49):
it's not around anymore in print. Yeah, I think I
remember a bit shutting down and being sort of sad
it's online, I guess. Yeah. In two thousand and eight,
it moved too and moved online. Yeah, so really every
aspect of that story from this outrageous UM claim that
the bat Boy was captured and sent to Afghanistan, to
UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's most reliable,
(04:14):
the world's only reliable newspaper to it's shutting down and
going online because of massive profit losses after being purchased
by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The Weekly World
News is a perfect analogy for the course of tabloids
over the last like twenty years as a whole. Yeah,
and we're gonna dig into that. Um. I think it's funny.
(04:37):
I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
I guess they figured if we're just going to be
making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid,
I mean, it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, well,
(04:58):
we might as well just say that in the thing,
get it. Yes, And one of their apparently one of
their editors is quoted as saying, I could only find
one source for this quote, so I don't know how
true it is. It could be made up, which would
be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
whole thing. But um, he said, if our if our
readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
(05:22):
were well aware. That's great and it is an extreme example.
But there are there are some aspects of the weekly
World News that do fit the bill of the of
a standard tabure. Um. So I mean, let's talk about it.
What is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start at
the beginning or should we just talk about a little
bit then do the history? Do you want to do
the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the history first,
(05:42):
because positive that we don't practice. So I did see, Um,
there was one slight error. This is an ed Grabanowski article,
which are always great. But did you see this other
etymology for the word tabloid with the pill company No um.
In the late eighteen hundreds, apparently, um Burrows, Welcome and
(06:02):
Company was a pharmaceutical company in England. They produced at
the time like medicines were all like BC powder and
good he's powdered. They all powdered, and he I think
was the first one to make into to a pill
by compressing the powder, and he called it a tabloid
of cocaine. Yeah, it probably was. And um that that
(06:24):
word became to mean anything figuratively, that was a small
dose of anything. So the word tabloid actually became came
before I believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, uh,
the physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like
the origin of life on Earth comes from another planet,
(06:46):
but really, where did the origin of life begin? Right?
It doesn't answer the question. It's the same thing like, okay,
so maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then
it was associated with newspapers that the tabloid paper um
is printed on a smaller, more compact version of the
normal newspaper newsprint called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid
(07:10):
is a smaller, more compact version the broadsheet is longer
and wider um and then the tabloid were usually printed
on the smaller paper, hence the word. Yeah. So at
first it was a pill, then it became the size
of the paper, and then later on it just became
um the style of the paper and size, but really
(07:33):
the style. But tabloids, as were explaining them, are basically
like um. They are also commonly referred to as rags
as UM gutter public. Yeah, they're gossip sheets, whatever it's
it's basically it's a it's a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded
newspaper and um tabloids. One of the ways that they
(07:57):
exist and always have existed is in compare us into
a quote, legitimate newspapers. So like originally newspapers that say,
like the beginning the early nineteenth century, they were extremely stuffy,
they were extremely expensive. They were like six cents per
which was like half a day's pay for the average labor.
(08:18):
Really dry. Man. If you ever read these old New
York Times articles, there's like they just really just you know,
they lay out the facts and then say the end
exactly like the AP used to do until a few
years ago. The AP always did that. It was sort
of straight who, what, when, how, where and why the
old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a quote
(08:42):
in there and that was it. UM. And so out
of this I guess kind of boredom and a need
for the working class to be able to, you know,
get their news too, because I couldn't afford it came.
The predecessors were tabloids called the penny press, so they
were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
stories from just these boring facts, political stories, business stories,
(09:07):
that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
And they changed the style of writing sentences for shorter paragraphs,
for shorter way more emotion. It was. It was designed
for that, like listen to the triumph of this family
over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what we
see now in mainstream newspapers. Exactly. Yes, a lot, a
(09:30):
lot of our mainstream UM media owes quite a bit
to the evolution of tabloids. And there's actually a point
where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
newspapers this interplay where tabloids almost kind of break ground,
take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
(09:52):
it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
you know, we're the upstanding publication exactly just the sky
right I'm discussed by it all. Um. Yellow journalism came
about in the era of William Randolph Hurst with his
New York Journal later called The New York Journal American,
and he was the first person in the United States,
(10:15):
at least, because I think in England it even started
out before us. But I'm not mistaken. In England, I
think they were kind of like the birth of some
of the more tabloid style writing. But in America William
Randolph Hurst did with all of a sudden he started
doing some celebrity stuff and some murderer and little sensational
(10:36):
gore here and there, and he found that it sold
really well up until the Depression, when nothing sold really well.
Um pick up after the Depression when a very uh
monumental figure in tabloid history named Janetta Janetoso Pope or
Gene Pope Gene Pope jr. Um, He bought a Hurst
(10:58):
paper called The New York and Choir for seventy five grand,
changed it to tabloid size, started uh printing you know,
you know, stuff that he he figured people like to
stare at a car crash, So he was actually inspired
literally by seeing people like jockeying to see the blood
and the gore in a car crash and thought, wow,
(11:19):
people really are disgusting and crazy, so I'm going to
give them what they want. And he did remember the
crime scene photography episode we talked about we gi um
he he and he sold a lot of stuff to
Jeane Pope. Um, he printed a lot of his like
gory crimes photos. What's his name, right, Lewis Felig, I think,
(11:41):
but he went by W E G EIGI Interesting. Yeah,
so I said it again. Um yeah, I was cueing
like the Executive Orders episode how many times, like I'll
bunch you know why because it was super interesting. Um.
So he starts selling a lot of papers um, based
on this new style. And then a guy named Rupert Murdoch,
(12:04):
who you may have heard of, who saw or prove
that you could actually have pretty wide circulation um, and
began selling News of the World in England millions of
copies sex scandals. And then the Pope said, you know what,
if he can sell millions and millions of copies, so
can I let me changed the name to the National Enquirer. Boom, Right,
(12:27):
the National Enquirer was born. But um, the Inquirer is
we know it still wasn't born yet. It was the
thing they were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and
lesbianism and like horrible acts of violence, posthumous violence. There
is this one headline um about a team ripping the
head off of a corpse to get at its gold teeth,
(12:50):
and always with the gory crime scene photos like the
pulp comics we're doing too. Yeah, very much. It was
just very tawdry. It's um, I mean if the stuff
uh and the inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was
just like it's not fathom model. But the reason it's
not is again because of Gene Pope. So he had
a lot of competition U and not just he, but
(13:14):
the whole industry was facing a big problem in that
news stands were starting to dry. So Jane Pope came
up with an idea. He's like supermarkets. Everybody goes to supermarkets.
I need to get in there now. I stand in
the line at the checkout stand, right. But he knew
like there was no way that any any respectable supermarket
was going to sell his tabloid, his rag that the required.
(13:36):
So he cleaned the thing up right, he um added
way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
and his News of the World, and um added way
more celebrity stuff sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know, um,
this stuff he was talking about before that was just
really it was more like a like a the Senator
(13:58):
got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And there's this
guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the for Vanity Fair,
and he wrote this article called us Confidential. It was
in the June two thousand two issue of Vanity Fair.
It was about this and about that transition going from
you know, the crime scene photography to um astrology overnight
(14:21):
so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um,
the Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took. We got
to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
and celebrity sex scanals. And it wasn't even cleaning up
attacked that much. It's not like you said, we're going
(14:42):
to become the you know, New York Times. No, but
that's why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand
in line at a supermarket checkout line. It's because in
the nineteen sixties Jeane Pope was like, we got to
get in the supermarkets. I think people either read these
or they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
(15:04):
Like no one just says like, let me watch a
little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
but I think a lot of people are guilty of
picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
you know what they do now, and of course we're
going to get to this, might as well bring it up.
They look at People magazine and US Weekly because they
(15:25):
have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
unquote respectable thing to pick up and read. Even now,
come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have.
It's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
actually you can thank the Star for that. Um Star
used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid, right, and it
(15:48):
went over to the glossy format at some point. I
think that may be the late nineties, and um it,
it married those two things, glossyful magazine format with tabloid,
and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
we've already got the glossy magazine part. Let's just start
doing the tabloid thing. Yeah, I mean what people have,
(16:09):
I mean legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
Malibu and look at this person, and look at that person,
and who wore it better? Plastics versus asters? Yeah, exactly,
stuff like that, who wore it better? I know somebody
who's been reading people. Yeah, when they have the two
(16:31):
ladies with the same dress, so mean, especially when it's
like eight two to eight teens now, I know, especially
when it's like, you know, it's just means. Sometimes I'm
gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll be like, a
who were it better? Kevin Smith or podcaster Chuck Bryant.
People go, I guess Kevin Smith, because I've never heard
of this other guy. It's the same guy. It's the
(16:53):
same dude anyway. Alright, so, um, that's pretty much the
(17:26):
quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States, at
least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're lousy
with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading edge
of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let get
to that, all right. So before we go onto tabloid
stories and how they get these stories, we should point
(17:46):
out that the National Choir, the Star of the Globe,
the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're all purchased
by American Media, Inc. Like all all of those just
snapped them all up, basically, just goout on the show. Now,
every big tabloid in the United States was purchased by
this one company. And um, yeah, I think that's never
(18:07):
a good thing. Or maybe that's just me being it,
you know. Well that's the funny thing, like the title
of this sidebars, they control everything you read unless you
don't read any of those things. So, um, the the
am I, actually they're the reason the Weekly World News
shut down. Um, they were like, okay, as things losing money.
Am I posted a hundred and sixty million dollar loss
(18:30):
in two thousand and six and was facing like a
billion dollars in debt to bad Boy had to go. Yeah,
bad Boy went to the internet. Yeah that makes sense.
That's where bad Boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this.
What what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
it's tabloids like pornographer, you know when you see it, right,
it's tough to define. That's not um entirely the case.
(18:52):
There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among tabloids that
make a tabloid tabloid? Agreed, So what are there? Well
Ed points out here something really important. The key to
a tabloid story is not that it be true, just
that someone has said that it's true, and they latch
onto that person. And as long as they say, you know,
(19:14):
attribute these quotes to this person, then they can't be
held accountable. And that person is frequently cited as an
expert and a close friend. Sure, I mean, if somebody
it's all the way you present the story, if the
if you're saying, if your whole story is all about
how this person said something, yeah, it's not really about
(19:36):
the story. The story is still there, but you're focusing
on this person. It's like the the rule of the
of the tabloid industry. It's kind of a trick though,
because very much you're tricking people into thinking you're reading
about a story about Brandjelina. In fact, you're reading a
story about a former made that worked for Branchlina and
what they think is true, right, Or some crazy person
(20:00):
who has nothing to do with bran Angelina who like
just um, maybe saw one of them in a coffee
shop and like, notice they didn't tip or something like that. Bam,
there's your story. Um. Also, like we said that, they
like to add experts, and but the experts are in
no way, shape or form qualified in a lot of ways.
(20:21):
They have no credentials, they're not vetted. It's more say, like, um,
the example Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast, Right,
if somebody spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot,
researching bigfoot, there there's no institute out there to qualify them,
to give them credentials. But you could reasonably make a
(20:43):
case of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right.
The thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star
or the weekly World News is not going to the
trouble of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so
and so says that there's a bunch of these things
out and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
(21:05):
get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop
and they will say did she look that? They would
say maybe something like yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
and they would say did she look strung out and
that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
she sort of looked like that, And then all of
a sudden, that's the quote because witnesses say she looked
(21:28):
strung out and like she had not eaten for days,
and uh, all they have to do is say yes,
exactly yes, or like would you say this? And if
the prison says yes and you just said that. Another
hallmark of tabloids is making a huge deal out of
something I guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah,
(21:50):
and like actually looking through other newspapers to find some
quasi interesting story and then blowing it up into possibly
a front page feature. Um, just by getting into this story,
really interviewing a lot of people involved um, and then
maybe throwing an expert or something like that, and just
basically making a lot a lot of hay out of
(22:12):
something very um kind of negligible. UM. And this by
adding a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do
you think about this? What do you think about that?
It takes it from being about the story, right, like
a UM man saved a goat from a burning building
(22:32):
to what these people think about this man and his goat?
And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
you mean, maybe who knows? As somebody said it, then
they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh.
Celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
(22:56):
all kinds of informants from um secure people who had
worked for them, or who worked at venues where they
might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
and uh, I remember we shot you ever heard of
Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
(23:19):
gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like entertainment tonight.
But that's how she made her living. And she was
like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
a commercial at her house one time in l a
and she was there hanging out and uh, I was like,
you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
(23:41):
and his secret sex addiction and and she was she
always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me
she had a list a rollodex of people on the
bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
big news, and it's um, that's pretty much standard. Like
(24:01):
you were saying. There, there's this guy named um Paul
McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
and um, you know Dentel Elliott. He was he was
Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
(24:25):
and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin
and after he died. Um, she took like a big
turn for the worst, and this cop tipped off I
think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
(24:46):
want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
and everything. Well, she ended up killing herself and he
now says, like, you know, I take responsibility for that,
which is meaningless, but um yeah he The all started
(25:10):
with a cop knowing about this and then tipping off
the reporters. So sad cops are not immune to this
kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh. Another
(25:53):
way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um,
from what I've gathered, did you're either you fall into
three categories. You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You
either are lucky enough and are smart enough to kind
of be low profile and you're not really a subject
of table tabloids. There's a lot of big stars you've
(26:15):
never seen the tabloids Harrison for yeah uh. Or number
three is you play ball a little bit, which means,
you know what, I'll give you a little information here
and there. I'll leak out some stuff here and there.
If you play nice with me, I'll play ball with you.
Maybe I'll let you know, like what restaurant I'll be
(26:35):
coming out of one night you can photograph me. Give
you your little time and um. Sometimes the movie studios
a leak stuff to get get up a little press.
They did that a lot a lot back in the day,
but it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic
relationship between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
(26:55):
It's position through things like just basically you're a star
because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
for your cellulite, But what if someone picks up the
magazine they're like, oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad,
how sad, but at the same time I feel better
(27:18):
about myself exactly. Um So, I guess one of the
ways that you stay in the tabloids is through having
your picture made. As we stay here in the South,
a group of people known collectively as paparazzi, and they
actually I found out, are named after a paparazz so photographer.
(27:42):
You didn't know that named Paparazzo with a capital P.
He was a character in Um Fellini Fellini's ladulce Vita
that's right movie, and um apparently they were already extant,
but they got their name through this character. But even
in they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the seventies again
(28:05):
thanks to Jane Pope um, that they really became the
kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today. And
it was all because Jeane Pope was obsessed with Jackie
Oh and Aristotle or and he would pay so much
money for anything on them that people that the photographers
were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
(28:28):
of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
Gene Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
in Greece and in in Europe. UM, and that that
still is connected to this day, to the death of
Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased by
paparazzi on motorcycles. Yeah, very sad, but that's all generoso
(28:53):
Pope jr. Um. I'll bet that guy wore huge black
glass thick ones like Robert Jernier at the end of
See you know God, that's for great Um. Supposedly Felini too,
I dug this up. Took the word from an Italian
word that described the buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified,
but he said in an interview in Time magazine in
(29:14):
the seventies that he's like, yeah, I always just associate
it with something buzzing around you and in your way, Like, well,
that's paparazzi. Um. And there's that movie too, Paparazzi. Is
that what I was called from two thousan four? Yeah,
with the dude, uh what's his face goes back and
beats up Coalhauser. Yeah. Did you see it? No, No,
I ran across it on IMDb today. It's not bad
(29:35):
at all. Um. It's also it could very easily be
based on the life of Alec Baldwin. Uh yeah, sure, yeah, yeah,
because there's I think the categories you were describing, Um,
the people who are just so big that they can't
keep a low profile, but they also don't want or
need that that the tabloids on them. But I also
(30:00):
very much gotten the impression it's like there's a lot
of people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
at all. Yeah, it's a it's a tough thing. And
because there are people plenty, like you're saying, like plenty
of people out there who are big stars, but you
never see anything about him in the tabloids. Is because
they just stay out of it. They stay away from it,
(30:21):
you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think of one. I mean,
there's so many. That's probably why I can't think of it.
But like Harrison Ford is a good example, I guess,
except when he started dating cliss to Flockhart, they were
they were in the tabloids a lot. But I also
suspect like most of that stuff was all very pleasant,
like hand holding things so yeah, but she was in
the tabloids a lot because of her weight, so that
fed into that, you know, like, maybe she'll be happy
(30:44):
and eat again now that she has Harrison Ford, you know, yeah,
he's just like eat this, eat that too. Here, eat
this all right, let's talk about let's talk about the law. Yeah,
because this was really interesting, I thought, because the first
thing you think with the rest of it was not
(31:04):
interesting at all. No, I thought. I thought this was
super interesting though, because the first thing I think of
is why aren't these people suing every day? Suing these tabloids.
Some try, some do, some have been successful for a while.
For the early tabloids, ones like um oh, what were
they called, like Confidential I think was one of the
(31:24):
early tabloids. Um, like the tatler Um, they're just whatever
stupid name about not about airing dirty laundry. That was
the name of some pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties.
Dirty laundry was probably one of them, I'll bet um.
And they got away with that stuff because well, for
(31:46):
two reasons. This guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote
I watched a wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty
much this definitive history of the tabloids. And he's got
his bona fides because he was an edit her for
the National Enquirer, right. Um. And he said, there's two
reasons in the fifties and sixties. One, if you were
a legitimate star, these things were so in the gutter
(32:10):
that the stoop to suing them was problematic. In one,
it was the attention that lawsuit would attract because the
regular press was gonna start talking about it, would make
you look as bad as well, it would draw a
lot more attention to the original story. And then the
second thing is that even if you want that publisher
doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
(32:30):
Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert
Murdoch all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
I think Jeane Pope took the Inquirer from like fifteen
thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
peak in the eighties. Um. And so suddenly they did
have deep pockets and things changed. And um. Carol Burnett
(32:53):
kind of still to this day stands as like a
bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids. As far
as the law goes, Yeah, she sued in uh after
nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
(33:15):
She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
was blitzed at this restaurant and she yeah, he's a
(33:38):
big fan, probably, And she sued in one one point
six million dollars, which was and we'll find out here
in a second. This is one of the hallmarks of
their litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion to day,
(34:01):
I think, uh, And then um, it was reduced by
an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
kind of suits, and then it was settled out of court.
So I would imagine for even less than that, UM,
but it was still was a big deal. It was
the first time really that like a major star was
able to win a defamation lawsuit against the tabloid. But
(34:23):
it was one of the I don't want to say
it was one of the only times. It was one
of the very few times, especially if you are going
on the premise of all the people who want to
sue the tabloids and don't actually bring a suit because
things have changed now now the tabloids have these reputations
for being extremely fearsome litigators, where like, if you want
(34:44):
to sue them, you thought that story that ticked you
off was bad, They're going to get anything they can
and they're going to do it through the courts. So
like when Aretha Franklin or no um oh Elsa Taylor, Yes,
when she tried to sue I think the Inquirer, or
when she did see the Inquirer, the Inquirer's lawyers tried
to subpoena all of her medical records for the past
(35:07):
thirty years. So they go after everything. They try to
drag your life into the spotlight to make it like
really not worth your while to sue them. Yet it's
the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
York Times article. H Vincent Chifo, Everyone's Italian um. Everybody
has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
(35:27):
scorpion defense, which is, uh, you don't attack a scorpion
because you will get stung. Um. Aside from not the
not the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's
pretty straightforward. I guess do they need to be complex?
But you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's
the spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
(35:48):
don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
up on or been pooped on. That's what they should use.
Because the scorpion can only do one thing. To year
old can humiliate you in a number of ways. Have
you ever heard So there's this whole thing that like
scorpions commit suicide if you set them on fire by
stinging themselves. Really and apparently there's a lot of like
(36:09):
YouTube videos out there people like doing this with scorpions,
like sting them on fire, and then the scorpion will
like jump about and like sting itself and eventually die. Well,
I'll be trying to put the fire out. They found
that this, They found that that scorpions are almost entirely
immune to their own venom, and that really all this
is just a reaction of being burned alive. They're like
(36:31):
trying to like they're flailing about, and one of the
flails is like they're they're stingers moving and sometimes it
stings itself. So it appears to dumb kids who set
scorpions on fire that scorpions committing suicide terrible. Isn't that awful?
That's a great tangent though, thanks me, all right, don't
burn animals or insects of any kind, kids, It's just mean.
(36:51):
That's exactly means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, Um, you
have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
only that what they printed was false, but that they
knowingly printed information they knew was false. Because it's got
to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
(37:13):
just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed, slander
is stated with your mouth. These are the two differences
or I guess you could blink it out with your eyes.
That's true. Um, So, basically the scorpion defense and then
the delays. The first thing they're gonna do is start
(37:36):
filing motions to delay, to delay, to spend a lot
of money, a lot of money. So and if you
think about it, there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah,
it's your reputation. So a star who has a bunch
of money says, I have a bunch of money, and
I'm really mad at these guys, and i want to
teach them a lesson, So I'm going to soothe them,
and that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids
(37:58):
trying to make it not worth your all, that you'll
drop it because you don't really need this money. You're
looking for a judgment and hopefully you'll get bored. Well
in the tabloids don't care. Even if they drag this
thing out in print a retraction six months later, no
one remembers. No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well,
six months later, that's a it's a well put because
(38:21):
apparently part of the judgment of some of these and
in successful suits is that you can't write about um
the star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they'll
like cut a deal sometimes and say, you know what,
I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
the next year. And then they put on their calendar
Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
(38:42):
effing with him again and UM. Another way that tabloids
stay out of court is most of their UM articles
are read screened by an attorney or attorneys. They have
a retainer, so each article it's printed and it comes
to this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
(39:07):
legal expert. Yea, you you really don't have a case
if you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
They want to walk right up to the line of
libel and stop there. And they're pretty good, and you're
in ate on it, and then you're in ate on it,
and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
(39:28):
this is not libelous, prove it, spend spend half a
million dollars trying to prove this, and some people do,
like Aretha Franklin. I think settled Tom Cruise Schwarzenegger and
Katie Kate Cruise and one did she win because Katie
Holmes just filed in March. She is she settled for
(39:50):
a donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
She did it just this past March. She filed suit
against him for this one cover um like, yeah, bags
under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem why
she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
(40:14):
on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also include,
you know, stuff against Scientology because Travolta just had the big,
little supposed tawdry affairs here in Georgia. And then I
(40:40):
guess another homework that's not really in um it's not
really in the article, but I think you can make
a pretty strong case is that sometimes a lot of
times the tabloid gets things right. Yeah, but the the
way that they do it often is very much unethical
(41:02):
and immoral as far as um the standards of the
press is concerned and that's what Rupert what's been going
on with Rupert Murdoch like UM Parliament, like a parliamentary
UM panel basically said you're not fit to run news
corps any longer because this scandal is so huge. With
the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't remember
(41:25):
what episode we talked about it in, but there was
the girl who was kidnapped and like the News of
the World writers were hacking into her UM voicemail and
then deleting them and so the police thought she was
still alive and it was possibly affecting the course of
the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
(41:46):
people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
four thousands, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller,
Steve Coogan of UM for our Party people and Tristan
Shandy UM. Some people have already won. But for the
(42:08):
most part it's UM. These people aren't gonna get any
any damage is awarded. It's basically just no. News of
the World is shut down now. But it was out
of hand and now they're they're showing that they were
also hacking email, which great Britain has this kind of
um this this computer theft law now which makes email
(42:28):
hacking way worse than phote and hacking. So if that
opens up to be a big thing, there's people are
actually gonna start doing time for it. Yeah, that's what
I say. But like I was saying, sometimes they get
things right. They do um. Over the years, we'll mention
a few O. J. Simpson case the National Enquiry, and
it seems like it's generally the Inquirer that that sort
(42:49):
of scoops the legit ones. It's never like the Star. Yes,
you know, so the National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial,
the uh story about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah,
they scooped the story of the dealer that sold him
a knife similar to the murder weapon. I guess knife
(43:10):
dealers the way they scooped the shoe story. Remember there
were bloody footprints. I thought this was awesome. They really
went to town to because there was a Bruno Molly
bloody footprint at the scene. And O. J. Simpson said,
I don't, I don't. I've never owned a pair of
shoes like that, and they went back and found footage
of him from like wearing them on the field, like
(43:34):
reporting yeah, and proved that yes, indeed he did have
those shoes. And he's like, oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh.
Bill Cosby's kid Ennis. Remember when he was killed. The
inquiry offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for information, and
that actually led to somebody coming forward and giving the
information that led to the capturing of the killer. That's right,
(43:57):
Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah. In two thousand one, he
Um came out and was like, oh, yeah, I guess
he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart when he
was running for president, I remember this well. He was
on the monkey business down in Miami with what was
(44:18):
her name, Donna Rice. UM's a funny photo when you
look at it now. He I haven't seen it. I
don't think. She's just like sitting on his lap and
he's just got a big grin on his face and
he's got a T shirt that says monkey shines grew
And it was it was all over the place at
the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
was because of this this Um picture in the inquiry,
(44:40):
they scooped everybody on it and Russia Limball, Yeah, my
favorite drug addict that was exposed, Rush Limball. Yeah. I
remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
I don't know how many a day, but he bought
apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
(45:02):
eighty pills a day, just so I remember hearing it
was like, how is he alive or even not a
standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
But again, so there there could be it could have
come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
from um yeah, they could have um, they could have
(45:24):
gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes loose, looser
ethics than maybe again A New York Times reporter, Um,
so tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned um, at the peak,
the National Choir was selling about five million copies in circulation.
(45:48):
Now all of the leading ones in the United States
combined sell about five point four million, so they've really
gone down. In One of the reasons why is because
they were so successful it mainstream media became much more
tabloid e and tabloids became much less, much less different.
(46:10):
The field of competition increased. Yeah, and basically everyone was
kind of doing similar stuff now. And they point out
the article during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because
stuff you were seen on CNN and was just as
salacious as anything you would read in the Star. And
again it's like the mainstream media kind of took a
cue from tabloids, as they have so many other times.
(46:34):
They were so pissed off about that. With the Clinton thing,
they were probably just like, let's let's make up some stuff.
Let's like what if he used a cigar? And they
were like, yeah, exactly, it was all true. Yeah with Clinton, man,
those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's chuck. Uh.
(47:00):
If you want to learn more about tabloids and see
a picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type
in tabloids T A B L O I D S
in the search bar at how stuff works dot com,
which means it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me. It's
Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina,
(47:23):
m conducting research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship.
I wanted to let you know that your podcast serves
a great resource for English learners in other countries. Um.
I've been introducing your podcast to students and adults I
meet who are interested in furthering their English and learning
more about US culture. Yeah, little scary too, Um. The
(47:44):
idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
Your podcast is providing a fun and am in a
way for students here to practice listening to different English accents, um,
(48:05):
to try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes,
to learn new vocabulary. Why I feel a lot of
heat all of a sudden, um, And to become more
informed on the various issues you discuss. The idea of
people listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge.
Is part is a part of us culture that I
am proud to share and thank you very much for
(48:25):
that spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela Hartley, it's
very nice, thank you very much for that. We're becoming
a cult like figures like Rodriguez. Who there's this like
singer songwriter from I think the late sixties, early seventies
and he just went by the name Rodriguez and released
a couple of albums that is totally flopped here and um,
(48:47):
he just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that
in South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just
incredible status overly and everyone wondered what happened to him,
and finally years later he found out, like he's like
a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
documentary that just came out about the whole time. It
(49:07):
sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary, but
it sounds like a feature film, like something someone would
make up. I saw a movie like that, you mean,
I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
it was very much like that where the one of
the producers afterwards of the Q and it was like
it was he was asked if they were going to
(49:29):
turn it into like a feature film. Then he was like,
we can't. Like there's just too many it's too outlandish
that if you fictionalized it, people would be like, this
is stupid. Why did you Why did you make these choices?
I want to see it. Yeah you should. It's very good, awesome. UM, okay,
if you have a doc recommenentary a documentary recommendation, so
(49:49):
I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a doc you wreck,
thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
is that correct, docu wreck? Because I think I've seen
that written before. Really Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
(50:11):
you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
to stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
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Josh Clark
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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