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How Tabloids Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you Should
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Speaker 1: Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
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Speaker 1: Bryant uh, and this is Stuff you should Know. It's podcast.
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Speaker 1: It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
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Speaker 1: include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
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Speaker 1: found smell it. We'll just call it smellow rama. I
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Speaker 1: mean grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm
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Speaker 1: grumpy Jerry. Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at
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Speaker 1: each other when I came in here. No, Jerry was
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Speaker 1: mad at me for being mad at her, which doesn't count.
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Speaker 1: It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm
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Speaker 1: not grumpy. It's just head legitimate grumpy, right stripe. Everyone's scrapy,
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Speaker 1: so Chuck. Yes, I want to tell you about a
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Speaker 1: great American hero, William Katka Uh. Many years ago, in
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Speaker 1: the wilds of I wish I could remember where he
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Speaker 1: was found Mississippi, a little guy known as bat Boy
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Speaker 1: was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a
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Speaker 1: flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and UM
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Speaker 1: took him into their care. He became a ward of
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Speaker 1: the state. That makes sense because bat boys are known
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Speaker 1: to go to higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he
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Speaker 1: did true to form uh so uh bat Boy at
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Speaker 1: first he didn't like this captivity, UM, but eventually he
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Speaker 1: kind of became something of a patriot by um volunteering
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Speaker 1: to go search for Osama bin Laden and his Al
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Speaker 1: Qaeda operatives UM in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason
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Speaker 1: bat Boy was so good at it because he was
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Speaker 1: raising caves half bat half boy name Um. He wasn't
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Speaker 1: able to find Ben Lawden, but he still returned to
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Speaker 1: the U S a hero after a long long flight
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Speaker 1: because he just flew himself. Of course, and we know
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Speaker 1: of bat boys exploits thanks to a little newspaper known
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Speaker 1: as The Weekly World News. Have you heard of this?
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Speaker 1: Two things? I used to subscribe to The Weekly World Yeah,
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Speaker 1: for like a year in high school, me and my
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Speaker 1: buddy rad did because it was fun Radcliffe Radford, And
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Speaker 1: two I didn't realize that bat boy they continued his exploits.
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Speaker 1: I think bat Boys sold a lot of papers for
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Speaker 1: the Well, I knew he did, but I didn't know.
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Speaker 1: I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm
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Speaker 1: glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. He
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Speaker 1: he did, he tried to. I don't know if he
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Speaker 1: was successful. At least he went equipped more than with
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Speaker 1: just a sword. Um. But yeah, so bat Boy was
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Speaker 1: a prominent character, I guess. And the Weekly World News,
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Speaker 1: which which also bills itself as the world's only reliable newspapers. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that that little tagline or whatever. Yeah, it's not around
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Speaker 1: anymore in print. Yeah, I think I remember shutting down
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Speaker 1: and being sort of sad. Is online, I guess. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight it moved to and moved online.
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Speaker 1: So really every aspect of that story from this outrageous
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Speaker 1: um claim that bat Boy was captured and sent to
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Speaker 1: Afghanistan to UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's
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Speaker 1: most reliable, the world's only reliable newspaper, to it's shutting
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Speaker 1: down and going online because of massive profit losses after
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Speaker 1: being purchased by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The
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Speaker 1: Weekly World News is a perfect analogy for the course
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Speaker 1: of tabloids of the last like twenty as a whole. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and we're gonna dig into that. Um I think it's funny.
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Speaker 1: I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
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Speaker 1: I guess they figured if we're just going to be
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Speaker 1: making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
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Speaker 1: of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid.
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Speaker 1: I mean it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
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Speaker 1: it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
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Speaker 1: funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, Wow,
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Speaker 1: we might as well just say that in the thing,
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Speaker 1: get it? Yes, And one of their apparently one of
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Speaker 1: their editors, is quoted as saying, I could only find
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Speaker 1: one source for this quote, so I don't know how
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Speaker 1: true it is. It could be made up, which would
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Speaker 1: be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
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Speaker 1: whole thing, But um he said, if our if our
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Speaker 1: readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
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Speaker 1: were well aware. That's great and it isn't an extreme example,
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Speaker 1: but there are there are some aspects of the Weekly
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Speaker 1: World News that do fit the bill of that of
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Speaker 1: a standard table. So I mean, let's talk about it.
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Speaker 1: What what is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start
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Speaker 1: at the beginning or should we just talk about it
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Speaker 1: a little bit then do the history? Do you want
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Speaker 1: to do the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the
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Speaker 1: history first, because positive that we don't practice. So I
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Speaker 1: did see, Um, there was one slight error. This is
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Speaker 1: an ed Grabanowski article, which are always great. But did
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Speaker 1: you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with
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Speaker 1: the pill company UM in the late eighteen hundreds, apparently
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Speaker 1: um Burrows, Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England.
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Speaker 1: They produced at the time, like medicines, were all like
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Speaker 1: BC powder good, he's powder, They're all powdered. And he
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Speaker 1: I think was the first one to make into a
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Speaker 1: pill by compressing the powder and he called it a tabloid. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it probably was. And um that that word became to
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Speaker 1: mean anything figuratively, that was a small dose of anything.
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Speaker 1: So the word tabloid, it actually became came before I
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Speaker 1: believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, Uh, the
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Speaker 1: physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the
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Speaker 1: origin of life on Earth comes from another planet. But really,
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Speaker 1: where did the origin of life begin? Right, it doesn't
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Speaker 1: answer the question. It's the same thing, like, okay, so
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Speaker 1: maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then it
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Speaker 1: was associated with newspapers. The tabloid paper ums printed on
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Speaker 1: a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint
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Speaker 1: called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid is a smaller,
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Speaker 1: more compact version. The broadsheet is longer and wider UM
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Speaker 1: and then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper,
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Speaker 1: hence the word yeah. So at first it was a pill,
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Speaker 1: then it became the size of the paper, and then
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Speaker 1: later on it just became um the style of the
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Speaker 1: paper and size, but really the style. But tabloids, as
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Speaker 1: were explaining them, are basically like um. They are also
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Speaker 1: commonly referred to as rags, as um gutter public Yeah,
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Speaker 1: they're gossip sheets, whatever it's it's basically it's a it's
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Speaker 1: a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper and um tabloids. One
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Speaker 1: of the ways that they exist and always have existed
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Speaker 1: is in comparison to quote legitimate newspapers. So like originally
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Speaker 1: newspapers that say, like the beginning the early nineteenth century.
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Speaker 1: They were extremely stuffy. They were extremely expensive. They were
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Speaker 1: like six cents per which was like half a day's
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Speaker 1: pay for the average labor. Really dry. Man. If you
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Speaker 1: ever read these old New York Times articles, there's like
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Speaker 1: they just really just you know, they lay out the
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Speaker 1: facts and then say the end, exactly like the AP
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Speaker 1: used to do. Until a few years ago. The AP
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Speaker 1: always did that who, what, when, how, where and why
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Speaker 1: the old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a
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Speaker 1: quote in there and that was it. Um. And so
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Speaker 1: out of this, I guess kind of boredom and a
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Speaker 1: need for the working class to be able to, you know,
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Speaker 1: get their news too, because I couldn't afford it, came
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Speaker 1: the predecessors of tabloids, called the penny Press. So they
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Speaker 1: were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
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Speaker 1: stories from just these boring facts political stories, business stories,
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Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
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Speaker 1: And they changed the style of writing. Sentences were shorter,
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Speaker 1: paragraphs were shorter, way more emotion It was it was
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Speaker 1: designed for that, like listen to the triumph of this
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Speaker 1: family over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what
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Speaker 1: we see now in mainstream newspapers exactly. Yes, a lot,
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Speaker 1: a lot of our stream um media owes quite a
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Speaker 1: bit to the evolution of tabloids, and there's actually a
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Speaker 1: point where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
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Speaker 1: But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
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Speaker 1: newspapers this interplay where tabloid's almost kind of break ground. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
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Speaker 1: then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
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Speaker 1: it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
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Speaker 1: you know, we're the upstanding publication. Disgusting, right, I'm disgusted
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Speaker 1: by it, all um. Yellow journalism came about in the
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Speaker 1: era of William Randolph Hurst with his New York Journal
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Speaker 1: later called The New York Journal American, and he was
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Speaker 1: the first person in the United States, at least, because
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Speaker 1: I think in England it even started out before us,
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Speaker 1: but not mistaken. In England, I think they were kind
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Speaker 1: of like the birth of some of the more tabloid
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Speaker 1: style writing. But in America William randolf Hurst did with
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Speaker 1: all of a sudden he are to doing some celebrity
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Speaker 1: stuff and some murderer and little sensational gore here and there,
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Speaker 1: and he found that it sold really well up until
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Speaker 1: the Depression, when nothing's old really well. Um pick up
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Speaker 1: after the Depression when a very monumental figure in tabloid
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Speaker 1: history named Janetta Jenettos Pope or Gene Pope Jane Pope
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Speaker 1: j Jr. Um He bought a hearst paper called the
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Speaker 1: New York and Choir for Grand, changed it to tabloid size,
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Speaker 1: started uh printing you know, you know, stuff that he
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Speaker 1: figured people like to stare at a car crash. So
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Speaker 1: he was actually inspired literally by seeing people like jockeying
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Speaker 1: to see the blood and the gore in a car
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Speaker 1: crash and thought, Wow, people really are disgusting and crazy,
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Speaker 1: so I'm going to give them what they want. And
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Speaker 1: he did remember the crime scene photography episode we talked
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Speaker 1: about Uigi um he he and he sold a lot
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Speaker 1: of stuff to Geene Pope. Um he printed a lot
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Speaker 1: of his like gory crimes photos. What's his name, Lewis
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Speaker 1: fellig I think, but he went by W E G
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Speaker 1: E EG interesting So I said it again, Um yeah,
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Speaker 1: I was cueing like the Executive Orders episode, how many
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Speaker 1: times like I'll bunch, do you know why because it
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Speaker 1: was super interesting. Um. So he starts selling a lot
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Speaker 1: of papers based on this new style. And then a
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Speaker 1: guy named Rupert Murdoch who you may have heard of,
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Speaker 1: who saw or proved that you could actually have pretty
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Speaker 1: wide circulation um, and began selling News of the World
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Speaker 1: in England millions of copies sex scandals. And then the
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Speaker 1: Pope said, you know what, if he can sell millions
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Speaker 1: and millions of copies, so can I let me change
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Speaker 1: the name of the National Enquirer. Boom right, the National
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Speaker 1: Enquirer was born, but um, the Inquirer is we know
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Speaker 1: it's ill wasn't born yet. It was the thing they
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Speaker 1: were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and lesbianism and
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Speaker 1: like horrible acts of violence posthumous violence. There is this
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Speaker 1: one headline, um about a team ripping the head off
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Speaker 1: of a corpse to get at its gold teeth, and
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Speaker 1: always with the gory crime scene photos like the pulp
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Speaker 1: comics were doing too. Yeah, very much. It was just
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Speaker 1: very tawdry. It's um, I mean, if the stuff and
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Speaker 1: the Inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was just like
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Speaker 1: it's not fathomed. But the reason it's not is again
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Speaker 1: because of Gene Pope, so he had a lot of competition.
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Speaker 1: And not just he, but the whole industry was facing
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Speaker 1: a big problem in that news stands were starting to dry.
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Speaker 1: So Jeane Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets.
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Speaker 1: Everybody goes to supermarkets. I need to get in there.
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Speaker 1: And now I stand in the line at the checkout stand. Right.
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Speaker 1: But he knew like there was no way that any
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Speaker 1: any respectable supermarket it was gonna sell his tabloid, his rag.
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Speaker 1: So he cleaned the thing up, right. He um added
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Speaker 1: way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
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Speaker 1: and his News of the World, and um added way
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Speaker 1: more celebrity stuff, sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know,
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Speaker 1: um this stuff he was talking about before it that
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Speaker 1: was just really it was more like a like a
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Speaker 1: the Senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And
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Speaker 1: there's this guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the
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Speaker 1: for Vanity Fair, and he wrote this article called us Confidential.
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Speaker 1: It was in the June two thousand two issue of
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Speaker 1: Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition
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Speaker 1: going from you know, the crime scene photography to um
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Speaker 1: astrology overnight so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um.
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Speaker 1: The Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
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Speaker 1: experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
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Speaker 1: that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took We got
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Speaker 1: to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
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Speaker 1: and celebrity sex scandals. And it wasn't even cleaning them
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Speaker 1: attacked that much. Just not like you said, we're going
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Speaker 1: to become the you know, New York Times. But that's
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Speaker 1: why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand in
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Speaker 1: line at a supermarket checkout line, it's because in the
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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Jeane Pope was like, we got to get
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Speaker 1: in the supermarkets. I think people either read these or
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Speaker 1: they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
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Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
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Speaker 1: Like no one just says, like, let me watch a
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Speaker 1: little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
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Speaker 1: hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
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Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people are guilty of
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Speaker 1: picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
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Speaker 1: not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
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Speaker 1: you know what they do now, and of course we're
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Speaker 1: gonna get to this, might as well bring it up.
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Speaker 1: They look at People Magazine and US Weekly because they
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Speaker 1: have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
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Speaker 1: unquote respectable thing to pick up and read, even though,
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Speaker 1: come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have,
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Speaker 1: it's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
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Speaker 1: actually you can thank the Star for that. Um. Star
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Speaker 1: used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid. Yeah, and it
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Speaker 1: went over to the glossy format at some point. I
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Speaker 1: think that maybe the late nineties, and um it, it
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Speaker 1: married those two things, glossy people magazine format with tabloid
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Speaker 1: and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
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Speaker 1: we've already got the glossy magazine part, let's just start
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Speaker 1: doing the tabloid thing. Yeah. I mean, well, people have
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Speaker 1: I mean, legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
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Speaker 1: making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
15:43
Speaker 1: you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
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Speaker 1: Malibu and look at this person and look at that person,
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Speaker 1: and who wore it better? Plastics? Yeah, exactly, stuff like that,
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Speaker 1: who wore it better? I know somebody who's been reading people. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: when you have the two ladies with the same dress
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Speaker 1: me and especially when it's like two to eighteen, now,
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Speaker 1: I know, especially when it's like you know, it's just
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Speaker 1: means sometimes I'm gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll
16:12
Speaker 1: be like, a who aren't better Kevin Smith or podcaster
16:15
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith because I've
16:18
Speaker 1: never heard of this other guy. It's the same. It's
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Speaker 1: the same dude anyway. Alright, So um, that's pretty much
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Speaker 1: the quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States,
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Speaker 1: at least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're
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Speaker 1: lousy with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading
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Speaker 1: edge of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let
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Speaker 1: get to that, all right. So before we go onto
16:42
Speaker 1: tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should
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Speaker 1: point out that in the National Choir, the Star of
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Speaker 1: the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're
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Speaker 1: all purchased by American Media, Inc. Like all all of
16:56
Speaker 1: those just snap them all up basically just about on
16:59
Speaker 1: the show, now, every big tabloid in the United States
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Speaker 1: was purchased by this one company, and um, yeah, I
17:06
Speaker 1: think that's never a good thing. Or maybe that's just
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Speaker 1: me being it, you know. Well that's the funny thing.
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Speaker 1: Like the title of this sidebars, they control everything you
17:15
Speaker 1: read unless you don't read any of those things. So, um,
17:18
Speaker 1: the the am I. Actually they're the reason the Weekly
17:23
Speaker 1: World News shut down. Um, they were like, okay, these
17:25
Speaker 1: things losing money. Am I posted a hundred and sixty
17:28
Speaker 1: million dollar loss in two thousand and six and was
17:31
Speaker 1: facing like a billion dollars in debt. Yeah, bad boy
17:35
Speaker 1: boys of the Internet. Yeah that makes sense. That's where
17:38
Speaker 1: bad boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What
17:41
Speaker 1: what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
17:45
Speaker 1: it's tabloids like pornography, you know when you see it,
17:47
Speaker 1: all right, it's tough to define. That's not um entirely
17:51
Speaker 1: the case. There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among
17:55
Speaker 1: tabloids that make a tabloid a tabloid, I agreed, So
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Speaker 1: what are they? Well Ed points out here something really important.
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Speaker 1: The key to a tabloid story is not that it
18:05
Speaker 1: be true, just that someone has said that it's true, right,
18:09
Speaker 1: and they latch onto that person. And as long as
18:12
Speaker 1: they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person,
18:16
Speaker 1: then they can't be held accountable. And that person is
18:19
Speaker 1: frequently cited as an expert and a close friend. Sure,
18:25
Speaker 1: I mean, if somebody it's all the way you present
18:28
Speaker 1: the story. If the if you're saying, if your whole
18:31
Speaker 1: story is all about how this person said something, it's
18:34
Speaker 1: not really about the story. The story is still there,
18:36
Speaker 1: but you're focusing on this person. It's like the the
18:39
Speaker 1: rule of the of the tabloid industry. It's kind of
18:43
Speaker 1: a trick though, because very much you're tricking people into
18:45
Speaker 1: thinking you're reading about a story about Brandjelina. In fact,
18:50
Speaker 1: you're reading a story about a former made that worked
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Speaker 1: for branch Elina and what they think is true, right,
18:58
Speaker 1: or some crazy person who has nothing to do with
19:00
Speaker 1: Brandngelina who like just um, maybe saw one of them
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Speaker 1: in a coffee shop and like, notice they didn't tip
19:09
Speaker 1: or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Um. Also,
19:13
Speaker 1: like we said that, they like to add experts, and
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Speaker 1: but the experts are in no way, shape or form
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Speaker 1: qualified In a lot of ways, they have no credentials.
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Speaker 1: They're not vetted. It's more say, like, um, the example
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Speaker 1: Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast. Right, if somebody
19:30
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot, researching bigfoot.
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Speaker 1: There there's no institute out there to qualify them, to
19:38
Speaker 1: give them credentials, but you could reasonably make a case
19:42
Speaker 1: of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right. The
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Speaker 1: thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star or
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Speaker 1: the weekly World News is not going to the trouble
19:50
Speaker 1: of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so and
19:54
Speaker 1: so says that there's a bunch of these things out
19:58
Speaker 1: and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
20:01
Speaker 1: My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
20:03
Speaker 1: get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop,
20:08
Speaker 1: and they will say did she look that? They would
20:11
Speaker 1: say maybe something like, yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
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Speaker 1: and they would say did she look strung out and
20:17
Speaker 1: that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
20:22
Speaker 1: she sort of looked like that, And then all of
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Speaker 1: a sudden, that's the quote. Witnesses say she looked strung
20:27
Speaker 1: out and like she had not eaten for days, and Uh,
20:30
Speaker 1: all they have to do is say yes, exactly yes,
20:33
Speaker 1: or like would you say this? And if the prison
20:36
Speaker 1: says yes and you just said that. Another hallmark of
20:40
Speaker 1: tabloids is making a huge deal out of something I
20:45
Speaker 1: guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah, and like
20:49
Speaker 1: actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting
20:53
Speaker 1: story and then blowing it up into possibly a front
20:57
Speaker 1: page feature. Um, just by getting into this story, really
21:02
Speaker 1: interviewing a lot of people involved, um, and then maybe
21:06
Speaker 1: throwing an expert or something like that, and just basically
21:09
Speaker 1: making a lot a lot of hay out of something
21:12
Speaker 1: very um, kind of negligible. UM. And this by adding
21:18
Speaker 1: a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do you
21:20
Speaker 1: think about this? What do you think about that? It
21:21
Speaker 1: takes it from being about the story, right, like a
21:25
Speaker 1: um man saved a goat from a burning building, to
21:32
Speaker 1: what these people think about this man and his goat?
21:35
Speaker 1: And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
21:38
Speaker 1: you mean, maybe who knows if somebody said it, then
21:41
Speaker 1: they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh,
21:48
Speaker 1: celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
21:50
Speaker 1: tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
21:55
Speaker 1: all kinds of informants, from um security, people who would
21:59
Speaker 1: work from them, or who worked at venues where they
22:01
Speaker 1: might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
22:07
Speaker 1: can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
22:10
Speaker 1: and uh I, remember we shot you ever heard of
22:12
Speaker 1: Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
22:18
Speaker 1: gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like Entertainment Tonight.
22:23
Speaker 1: But that's how she made her living. And she was
22:25
Speaker 1: like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
22:27
Speaker 1: a commercial at her house one time in l A.
22:30
Speaker 1: And she was there hanging out, and uh I was like,
22:33
Speaker 1: you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
22:35
Speaker 1: just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
22:37
Speaker 1: sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
22:40
Speaker 1: and his secret sex addiction, and and she was He
22:43
Speaker 1: always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me.
22:45
Speaker 1: She had a list, a rollodex of people on the
22:48
Speaker 1: bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
22:51
Speaker 1: bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
22:53
Speaker 1: lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
22:55
Speaker 1: big news and it's um, that's pretty much standard, like
23:00
Speaker 1: you were saying. There, there's this guy named, um, Paul
23:05
Speaker 1: McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
23:08
Speaker 1: and um, you know Dentel Elliott he was he was
23:13
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
23:16
Speaker 1: older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
23:20
Speaker 1: Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
23:24
Speaker 1: and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin.
23:26
Speaker 1: And after he died, Um, she took like a big
23:29
Speaker 1: turn for the worst. And this cop tipped off I
23:32
Speaker 1: think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
23:35
Speaker 1: But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
23:38
Speaker 1: Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
23:42
Speaker 1: she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
23:45
Speaker 1: want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
23:49
Speaker 1: offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
23:53
Speaker 1: sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
23:55
Speaker 1: a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
23:58
Speaker 1: and everything. Well she ended up killing youself, Oh my god.
24:01
Speaker 1: And he now says like, you know, I take responsibility
24:04
Speaker 1: for that, which is meaningless. But um, yeah, he the
24:08
Speaker 1: all started with a cop knowing about this and then
24:12
Speaker 1: tipping off the reporters. That's so sad. Cops are not
24:18
Speaker 1: immune to this kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh.
24:23
Speaker 1: Another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um.
24:29
Speaker 1: From what I've gathered, you're either you fall into three categories.
24:32
Speaker 1: You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You either are
24:37
Speaker 1: lucky enough and are smart enough to kind of be
24:40
Speaker 1: low profile and you're not really a subject of tabo tabloids.
24:44
Speaker 1: There's a lot of big stars you've never seen the
24:45
Speaker 1: tabloids Harrison for yeah. Uh. Or number three is you
24:51
Speaker 1: play ball a little bit, which means, you know what,
24:55
Speaker 1: I'll give you a little information here and there. I'll
24:57
Speaker 1: leak out some stuff here and there. If you play
24:59
Speaker 1: nine with me, I'll play ball with you. Maybe I'll
25:03
Speaker 1: let you know, like what restaurant I'll be coming out
25:05
Speaker 1: of one night you can photograph me. Give you your
25:08
Speaker 1: little time. And um. Sometimes the movie studios a leak
25:12
Speaker 1: stuff to get get up a little pressed. They did
25:15
Speaker 1: that a lot a lot back in the day. But
25:17
Speaker 1: it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic relationship
25:20
Speaker 1: between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
25:25
Speaker 1: It's position through things like just basically you're a star
25:30
Speaker 1: because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
25:32
Speaker 1: thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
25:34
Speaker 1: for your cellulite. But what if someone picks up the
25:36
Speaker 1: magazine They're like, Oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
25:39
Speaker 1: I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
25:41
Speaker 1: they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad?
25:45
Speaker 1: How sad? But at the same time, I feel better
25:48
Speaker 1: about myself exactly. Um, So, I guess one of the
25:55
Speaker 1: ways that you stay in the tabloids is through have
26:00
Speaker 1: your picture made. A group of people known collectively is paparazzi,
26:06
Speaker 1: and they, actually, I found out, are named after a
26:10
Speaker 1: paparazz so photographer. You didn't know that named paparazzo with
26:15
Speaker 1: a capital P. He was a character in Um Follini
26:19
Speaker 1: Fellini's Ladulce Vita that's movie, and um apparently they were
26:24
Speaker 1: already extant, but they got their name through this character.
26:29
Speaker 1: But even then they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the
26:32
Speaker 1: seventies again thanks to Jane Pope. Um that they really
26:37
Speaker 1: became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today.
26:42
Speaker 1: And it was all because Jane Pope was obsessed with
26:45
Speaker 1: Jackie Oh and Aristotle and he would pay so much
26:50
Speaker 1: money for anything on them that people that the photographers
26:54
Speaker 1: were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
26:58
Speaker 1: of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
27:01
Speaker 1: Geane Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
27:04
Speaker 1: in Greece and in in Europe. Um and that that
27:08
Speaker 1: still is connected to this day, to the death of
27:11
Speaker 1: Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
27:15
Speaker 1: had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased paparazzi
27:19
Speaker 1: on motorcycle. Yeah, very sad, but that's all Generoso Pope Jr. Um.
27:24
Speaker 1: I'll bet that guy wore huge black glass thick ones
27:28
Speaker 1: like Robert de Niro at the end of Casino. God.
27:31
Speaker 1: That's great. Um. Supposedly Fellini too, I dug this up.
27:35
Speaker 1: Took the word from an Italian word that described the
27:39
Speaker 1: buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified, but he said
27:43
Speaker 1: in an interview in Time magazine in the sevenies that
27:45
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I always just associated with something buzzing
27:47
Speaker 1: around you in your way, Like, well, that's paparazzi. Um,
27:52
Speaker 1: and there's that movie too, Paparazzi Is that what it
27:55
Speaker 1: was called? From two four? Yeah, with the dude, uh
27:57
Speaker 1: what's his face? Goes back and beats up ol Houser.
28:01
Speaker 1: Did you see it? No? I ran across it on
28:03
Speaker 1: IMDb today. It's not bad at all. Um. It's also
28:07
Speaker 1: it could very easily be based on the life of
28:09
Speaker 1: Alec Baltwoin Uh yeah sure or something yeah yeah, because
28:15
Speaker 1: there's I think the categories you were describing, um, the
28:19
Speaker 1: people who are just so big that they can't keep
28:22
Speaker 1: a low profile, but they also don't want or need
28:25
Speaker 1: that that the tabloids on them. But I've also very
28:30
Speaker 1: much gotten the impression. It's like there's a lot of
28:33
Speaker 1: people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
28:34
Speaker 1: who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
28:38
Speaker 1: at all. It's as and because there are people plenty,
28:43
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like plenty of people out there who
28:46
Speaker 1: are big stars, but you never see anything about him
28:48
Speaker 1: in the tabloids just because they just stay out of it.
28:50
Speaker 1: They stay away from it, you know. Yeah, I'm trying
28:53
Speaker 1: to think of one. I mean, there's so many. That's
28:55
Speaker 1: probably why I can't think of it. But like Harrison
28:56
Speaker 1: Ford is a good example, I guess, except when he
28:59
Speaker 1: started eating close to Flockhart. They were, they were in
29:01
Speaker 1: the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect like most
29:04
Speaker 1: of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand holding things.
29:07
Speaker 1: So yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot
29:09
Speaker 1: because of her weight, so that fed into that, you know,
29:12
Speaker 1: like maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that
29:14
Speaker 1: she has Harrison Ford. You know, yeah, he's just like
29:19
Speaker 1: eat this, eat that too. Here, eat this all right,
29:26
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about the law. Because this
29:30
Speaker 1: was really interesting, I thought, because the first thing you
29:32
Speaker 1: think of the rest of it was not interesting at all. No,
29:35
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought this was super interesting though, because
29:37
Speaker 1: the first thing I think of is why aren't these
29:39
Speaker 1: people suing every day? Suing these tabloids. Some try, some do,
29:44
Speaker 1: Some have been successful for a while. For the early tabloids,
29:48
Speaker 1: ones like um oh what were they called? Like Confidential
29:53
Speaker 1: I think was one of the early tabloids, um like
29:57
Speaker 1: the Tatler Um, they're just whatever stupid name about, not
30:05
Speaker 1: about airing dirty laundry. That was the name of some
30:07
Speaker 1: pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties. Dirty laundry was
30:10
Speaker 1: probably one of them, I'll bet um. And they got
30:13
Speaker 1: away with that stuff because well, for two reasons. This
30:17
Speaker 1: guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote I watched a
30:22
Speaker 1: wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty much this definitive
30:24
Speaker 1: history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides
30:28
Speaker 1: because he was an editor for the National Enquirer, right, um,
30:32
Speaker 1: And he said, there's two reasons. In the fifties and sixties. One,
30:36
Speaker 1: if you were a legitimate star, these things were so
30:38
Speaker 1: in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic.
30:44
Speaker 1: In one, it was the attention that lawsuit would attract,
30:47
Speaker 1: because the regular press was gonna start talking about it
30:50
Speaker 1: would make you look as bad as well, it would
30:52
Speaker 1: draw a lot more attention to the original story. And
30:55
Speaker 1: the second thing is, even if you want that publisher
30:57
Speaker 1: doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
31:00
Speaker 1: Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert Murdoch,
31:04
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
31:07
Speaker 1: I think Jeane Pope took the inquiry from like fifteen
31:12
Speaker 1: thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
31:15
Speaker 1: peak in the eighties. Um. And so the suddenly they
31:19
Speaker 1: did have deep pockets and things changed, and um, Carol
31:22
Speaker 1: Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like
31:25
Speaker 1: a bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids as
31:29
Speaker 1: far as the law goes. Yeah, she sued in uh
31:32
Speaker 1: after nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
31:37
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
31:40
Speaker 1: Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
31:45
Speaker 1: She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
31:47
Speaker 1: her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
31:50
Speaker 1: I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
31:54
Speaker 1: accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
31:57
Speaker 1: started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
32:00
Speaker 1: was blitzed at this restaurant. And yeah, he's a big
32:08
Speaker 1: fan probably, And she sued in one one point six
32:13
Speaker 1: million dollars, which was and we'll find out here in
32:17
Speaker 1: a second. This is one of the hallmarks of their
32:18
Speaker 1: litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
32:22
Speaker 1: very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
32:26
Speaker 1: dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion today,
32:30
Speaker 1: I think, uh. And then um, it was reduced by
32:34
Speaker 1: an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
32:37
Speaker 1: kind of suits two grand Yeah, and then it was
32:40
Speaker 1: settled out of court. So I would imagine for even
32:42
Speaker 1: less than that. Um, but it was still it was
32:44
Speaker 1: a big deal. It was the first time really that
32:47
Speaker 1: like a major star was able to win a defamation
32:50
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the tabloid. But it was one of the
32:55
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it was one of the
32:56
Speaker 1: only times. It was one of the very few times,
32:58
Speaker 1: especially if you are going on the premise of all
33:01
Speaker 1: the people who want to sue the tabloids and don't
33:04
Speaker 1: actually bring a suit because things have changed now now
33:08
Speaker 1: the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators,
33:14
Speaker 1: where like, if you want to sue them you thought
33:16
Speaker 1: that story that ticked you off was bad, They're gonna
33:19
Speaker 1: get anything they can and they're going to do it
33:21
Speaker 1: through the court. So like when Aretha Franklin or no, um, oh,
33:25
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, when she tried to sue I think
33:29
Speaker 1: the Inquirer, or when she did see the Inquirer. The
33:32
Speaker 1: Inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records
33:36
Speaker 1: for the past thirty years. So they go after everything.
33:39
Speaker 1: They tried to drag your life into the spotlight to
33:41
Speaker 1: make it like really not worth your while to sue them. Yet,
33:45
Speaker 1: the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
33:47
Speaker 1: York Times article, h Vincent Cfo Everyone's italian Um. Everybody
33:53
Speaker 1: has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
33:57
Speaker 1: scorpion defense, which is you don't attack a scorpion because
34:01
Speaker 1: you will get stung um. Aside from not the not
34:06
Speaker 1: the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's pretty straightforward.
34:10
Speaker 1: I guess that do they need to be complex, but
34:13
Speaker 1: you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's the
34:16
Speaker 1: spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
34:18
Speaker 1: don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
34:20
Speaker 1: up on or been pooped on on. The scorpion can
34:26
Speaker 1: only do one thing to your all can humiliate you
34:29
Speaker 1: in a number of ways. Have you ever heard so
34:30
Speaker 1: there's this whole thing that like, scorpions commit suicide if
34:33
Speaker 1: you set them on fire by stinging themselves. Really and
34:38
Speaker 1: apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there
34:40
Speaker 1: people like doing this with scorpions, like them on fire,
34:43
Speaker 1: and then the scorpion will like jump about and like
34:45
Speaker 1: sting itself and eventually die. Well, I'll be trying to
34:47
Speaker 1: put the fire up. They found that this. They found
34:51
Speaker 1: that that scorpions are almost entirely immune to their own venom,
34:57
Speaker 1: and that really all this is just the reaction of
34:59
Speaker 1: being burned alive. They're like trying to like they're flailing about,
35:02
Speaker 1: and one of the flails is like they're they're stingers
35:05
Speaker 1: moving and sometimes it stings itself. So it appears to
35:08
Speaker 1: dumb kids who set scorpions on fire that scorpions committing
35:11
Speaker 1: suicide terrible and that awful. That's a great tangent though, thanks,
35:16
Speaker 1: all right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids,
35:20
Speaker 1: It's just means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
35:25
Speaker 1: later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, um, you
35:29
Speaker 1: have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
35:32
Speaker 1: only that what they printed was false, but that they
35:35
Speaker 1: knowingly printed information they knew was false, because it's got
35:40
Speaker 1: to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
35:43
Speaker 1: just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
35:45
Speaker 1: got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed. Slanders stated,
35:50
Speaker 1: with your mouth, there's are the two differences, or I
35:54
Speaker 1: guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. Um, So,
35:59
Speaker 1: basically the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first
36:04
Speaker 1: thing they're gonna do is start filing motions to delay,
36:07
Speaker 1: to delay to You spend a lot of money, a
36:09
Speaker 1: lot of money, so and if you think about it,
36:11
Speaker 1: there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah, it's
36:15
Speaker 1: your reputation. So a star who has a bunch of
36:17
Speaker 1: money says, I have a bunch of money, and I'm
36:19
Speaker 1: really mad at these guys, and i want to teach
36:21
Speaker 1: them a lesson. So I'm going to soothe them, and
36:24
Speaker 1: that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids try
36:28
Speaker 1: to make it not worth your while, that you'll drop
36:31
Speaker 1: it because you don't really need this money. You're looking
36:34
Speaker 1: for a judgment, and hopefully you'll get bored. Well in
36:37
Speaker 1: the tabloids don't care even if they drag this thing
36:40
Speaker 1: out in print a retraction six months later, no one remembers.
36:45
Speaker 1: No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well six
36:48
Speaker 1: months later, that's a it's a well put because apparently
36:51
Speaker 1: part of the judgment of some of these and in
36:53
Speaker 1: successful suits is that you can't write about um this
36:57
Speaker 1: star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they're like,
36:59
Speaker 1: cut a deal so times and say, you know what,
37:01
Speaker 1: I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
37:04
Speaker 1: the next year. And then they put on their calendar
37:07
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
37:12
Speaker 1: effing with him again and um. Another way that tabloid
37:17
Speaker 1: stay out of court is most of their UM articles
37:22
Speaker 1: are read screened by an attorney or attorneys they have
37:26
Speaker 1: a retainer. So each article it's printed kind of comes
37:30
Speaker 1: with this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
37:37
Speaker 1: legal expert. You you really don't have a case if
37:41
Speaker 1: you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
37:43
Speaker 1: They want to walk right up to the line of
37:45
Speaker 1: libel and stop there. And they're pretty good. And you're
37:48
Speaker 1: in aiate on it, and you're in aid on it,
37:50
Speaker 1: and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
37:52
Speaker 1: and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
37:55
Speaker 1: are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
37:58
Speaker 1: this is not libelous, prove it and spend half a
38:01
Speaker 1: million dollars trying to prove this. And some people do,
38:05
Speaker 1: like Aretha Franklin, I think settled Tom Cruise, Schwarzenegger and
38:09
Speaker 1: Katie Cruise. And one did she win because Katie Holmes
38:15
Speaker 1: just filed in March. She is she settled for a
38:21
Speaker 1: donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
38:25
Speaker 1: She did it just this past March. She filed suit
38:27
Speaker 1: against him for this one cover. Um like yeah, bags
38:31
Speaker 1: under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem? Why
38:33
Speaker 1: she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
38:38
Speaker 1: article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
38:44
Speaker 1: on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
38:47
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
38:50
Speaker 1: much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also
38:56
Speaker 1: include you know, stuff against Scientology because you both that
39:00
Speaker 1: just had the big little supposed Taudrey affairs here in Georgia.
39:09
Speaker 1: And then I guess another homework that's not really in UM.
39:14
Speaker 1: It's not really in the article, but I think you
39:17
Speaker 1: can make a pretty strong case is that sometimes a
39:23
Speaker 1: lot of times the tabloid gets things right, but the
39:28
Speaker 1: the way that they do it often is very much
39:31
Speaker 1: unethical and immoral as far as UM the standards of
39:35
Speaker 1: the press is concerned. And that's what Rupert what's been
39:38
Speaker 1: going on with Rupert Murdoch, like UM Parliament, like a
39:42
Speaker 1: parliamentary UM panel basically said you're not fit to run
39:47
Speaker 1: news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge,
39:50
Speaker 1: with the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't
39:54
Speaker 1: remember what episode we talked about in it, but there
39:56
Speaker 1: was the girl who was kidnapped and like the News
39:59
Speaker 1: of the World, writers were hacking into her UM voicemail
40:05
Speaker 1: and then deleting them and so the police thought she
40:07
Speaker 1: was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course
40:09
Speaker 1: of the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
40:16
Speaker 1: people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
40:21
Speaker 1: four thousand, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
40:25
Speaker 1: Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller
40:28
Speaker 1: Steve Coogan of Our Party people and Tristan Shandy. Um,
40:36
Speaker 1: some people have already won. But for the most part
40:38
Speaker 1: it's um. These people aren't gonna get any any damages awarded.
40:43
Speaker 1: It's basically just no news of the world is shut
40:45
Speaker 1: down now. But it was out of hand. And now
40:49
Speaker 1: they're they're showing that they were also hacking email, which
40:52
Speaker 1: great Britain has this kind of um. This this computer
40:55
Speaker 1: theft law now, which makes email hacking way worse than
41:00
Speaker 1: phoen hacking. So if that opens up to be a
41:02
Speaker 1: big thing, there's people are actually gonna start doing time
41:04
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I
41:07
Speaker 1: was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do um.
41:10
Speaker 1: Over the years, we'll mention a few O. J. Simpson
41:14
Speaker 1: case the National Enquiry, and it seems like it's generally
41:17
Speaker 1: the Inquirer that that sort of scoops the legit ones.
41:21
Speaker 1: It's never like the Star. Yes, you know, so the
41:25
Speaker 1: National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial, the story
41:31
Speaker 1: about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah, they scooped the
41:34
Speaker 1: story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar
41:37
Speaker 1: to the murder weapon. I guess knife dealers the way
41:41
Speaker 1: they scooped the shoes story. Remember there were bloody footprints.
41:44
Speaker 1: I thought this was awesome. They really went to town
41:48
Speaker 1: because there was a Bruno Molly bloody footprint at the
41:51
Speaker 1: scene and O. J. Simpson said, I don't, I don't.
41:53
Speaker 1: I've never owned a pair of shoes like that. And
41:58
Speaker 1: they went back and found footage of him from like
42:02
Speaker 1: wearing them on the field, like reporting yeah, and proved
42:08
Speaker 1: that yes, indeed he did have those shoes. And he's like,
42:10
Speaker 1: oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh. Bill Cosby's kid n's
42:14
Speaker 1: remember when he was killed, the inquiry offered a hundred
42:17
Speaker 1: thousand dollar reward for information and that actually led to
42:21
Speaker 1: somebody coming forward and giving the information that led to
42:25
Speaker 1: the capturing of the killer. That's right, Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah.
42:31
Speaker 1: In two thousand one, he Um came out and was like, oh, yeah,
42:36
Speaker 1: I guess he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart
42:41
Speaker 1: when he was running for president, I remember this well.
42:44
Speaker 1: He was on the monkey business down in Miami with
42:47
Speaker 1: what was her name, Donna Rice Um. When you look
42:51
Speaker 1: at it now, he h, I haven't seen it. I
42:54
Speaker 1: don't think she's just like sitting on his lap and
42:56
Speaker 1: he's just got a big grin on his face and
42:58
Speaker 1: he's got a T shirt that says Monk Shines grew
43:00
Speaker 1: And it was it was all over the place at
43:03
Speaker 1: the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
43:05
Speaker 1: was because of this this um picture in the inquiry.
43:09
Speaker 1: They scooped everybody on it and Russia Limbaugh, Yeah, my
43:14
Speaker 1: favorite drug addict that was exposed, Russia Limball. Yeah. I
43:18
Speaker 1: remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
43:21
Speaker 1: was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
43:24
Speaker 1: I don't know how many a day, but he bought
43:25
Speaker 1: apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
43:29
Speaker 1: on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
43:32
Speaker 1: eighty pills a day. Just so I remember hearing it
43:35
Speaker 1: was like, how is he alive or even not a
43:39
Speaker 1: standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
43:43
Speaker 1: But again, so there there could be it could have
43:46
Speaker 1: come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
43:50
Speaker 1: from um. Yeah, they could have um. They could have
43:54
Speaker 1: gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
43:58
Speaker 1: mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
44:00
Speaker 1: the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes looser ethics
44:05
Speaker 1: than maybe. Again, a New York Times reporter um said,
44:10
Speaker 1: tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned Um, at the peak,
44:13
Speaker 1: the National Choir was on about five million copies in circulation. Now,
44:19
Speaker 1: all of the leading ones in the United States combined
44:22
Speaker 1: sell about five point four million. So they've really gone down.
44:25
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because they were
44:28
Speaker 1: so successful that mainstream media became much more tabloid e
44:34
Speaker 1: and tabloids became much less, much less different. The field
44:41
Speaker 1: of competition increased, Yeah, and basically everyone was kind of
44:44
Speaker 1: doing similar stuff now. And they point out the article
44:47
Speaker 1: during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you
44:51
Speaker 1: were seen on CNN and was just as salacious as
44:54
Speaker 1: anything you would read in the Star. And again, it's
44:57
Speaker 1: like the mainstream media kind of took a cue from tabloids,
45:02
Speaker 1: as they have so many other times, so pissful about that.
45:06
Speaker 1: With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's
45:08
Speaker 1: let's make up some stuff. Let's like what if he
45:11
Speaker 1: used a cigar and they were like those crazy stuff
45:14
Speaker 1: about Yeah, exactly, it was all true with Clinton, man,
45:18
Speaker 1: those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
45:24
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's Chuck. If
45:29
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about tabloids and see a
45:32
Speaker 1: picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type in
45:35
Speaker 1: tabloids T A B L O I D S in
45:38
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which
45:40
Speaker 1: means it's time. Now, it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
45:46
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me, Josh
45:49
Speaker 1: and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina, conducting
45:55
Speaker 1: research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted
45:59
Speaker 1: to let you know that your podcasts it was a
46:01
Speaker 1: great resource for English learners in other countries. Um. I've
46:05
Speaker 1: been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet
46:08
Speaker 1: who are interested in furthering their English and learning more
46:10
Speaker 1: about US culture. Yeah, a little scary too, Um. The
46:14
Speaker 1: idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
46:18
Speaker 1: When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
46:21
Speaker 1: they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
46:24
Speaker 1: wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
46:28
Speaker 1: Your podcast is providing a fun, informative way for students
46:31
Speaker 1: here to practice listening to different English accents, um, to
46:35
Speaker 1: try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes, to
46:39
Speaker 1: learn new vocabulary why I feel a lot of heat
46:42
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, um, and to become more informed
46:45
Speaker 1: on the various issues you discuss. The idea of people
46:47
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge is
46:51
Speaker 1: part is a part of us culture that I am
46:53
Speaker 1: proud to share and thank you very much for that.
46:56
Speaker 1: Spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela part it's scaring.
47:00
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that. We're becoming a cult
47:03
Speaker 1: like figures like Rodriguez, who there's this like singer songwriter
47:09
Speaker 1: from I think the late sixties early seventies, and he
47:11
Speaker 1: just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple
47:14
Speaker 1: of albums that it's totally flopped here and um, he
47:17
Speaker 1: just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in
47:21
Speaker 1: South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just incredible
47:26
Speaker 1: status over there, and everyone wondered what happened to him,
47:29
Speaker 1: And finally years later he found out like he's like
47:32
Speaker 1: a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
47:36
Speaker 1: documentary that just came out about the whole time it
47:38
Speaker 1: sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary. Well,
47:40
Speaker 1: it sounds like that feature film, like something someone would
47:44
Speaker 1: make up. I saw a movie like that. You mean,
47:47
Speaker 1: I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
47:52
Speaker 1: it was very much like that. Where the one of
47:55
Speaker 1: the producers afterwards the Q and it was like he
47:58
Speaker 1: was asked if they were going to turn it into
48:00
Speaker 1: like a feature film, and he's like, we can't, Like
48:02
Speaker 1: there's just too many it's too outlandish that if you
48:06
Speaker 1: fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid. Why
48:08
Speaker 1: did you Why did you make these choices? Do I
48:10
Speaker 1: want to see it? Yeah? You should. It's very good, awesome. UM,
48:14
Speaker 1: okay if you have a doc recommendary documentary recommendation, so
48:19
Speaker 1: I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a DOCU wreck.
48:24
Speaker 1: Thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
48:28
Speaker 1: is that correct? Doc you wreck? Because I think I've
48:30
Speaker 1: seen that written before. Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
48:35
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
48:39
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
48:41
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
48:44
Speaker 1: too Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com For more on
48:53
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
48:56
Speaker 1: works dot com? Yeah h. Brought to you by the
49:05
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you