Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Tabloids Work

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. Have you ever been followed around by a person with a 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. It doesn't happen to me. It probably doesn't happen to you,

but we're the lucky ones. But if you're a celebrity and I know you kind of sign up for this, it's not great to be followed around by tabloid photographers and be splashed across those tabloid magazines. And this is all about tabloids from July 5th, 2012. How tabloids work! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. It's a podcast. It's audio only. But coming soon, it will also include smells. Oh, yeah? Smell-O-Vision? Not vision. Smell-O-Sound. Smell-O-Rama. Man, grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm grumpy. 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. It doesn't count. It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm not grumpy. I just had legitimate grumps. Grumps. Grumps. Everyone's gripy. All right. So, Chuck. Yes. I want to tell you about a great American hero. William Cat? No. Okay. Many years ago, in the wilds of, I wish I could remember where he was found, Mississippi. A little guy known as Batboy was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and took him into their care. He became a ward of the state. That makes sense because Batboys are known to go to higher ground during

flooding. Yeah, and he did. True to form. So, Batboy, at first, he didn't like this captivity, but eventually, he kind of became something of a patriot by volunteering to go search for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda operatives in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason Batboy was so good at it is because he was raised in caves. He's half Bat, half boy, hence his name. Sure. He wasn't able to find bin Laden, but he still returned to the US a hero after a long, long flight because he just flew himself. Of course. And we know of Batboy's 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 News. Did you really? Yeah, for like a year in high school, me and my buddy, Rad, did because

it was fun. Radcliffe. Radford. Man. And two, I didn't realize that Batboy, they continued his exploits. I think Batboy sold a lot of papers. Well, I knew he did, but I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. Yes, he did. He tried to. I don't know if he was successful. At least he went equipped more than with just a sword. Right. But yeah, so Batboy was a prominent character, I guess, in the Weekly World News. Good way to put it. Which also builds itself as the world's only reliable newspaper. Does it really? Yeah. I don't remember that. It's a little tagline or whatever. Oh, that's great. Yeah. It's not around anymore in print.

Yeah, I think I remember it shutting down and being sort of sad. It's online, I guess. Yeah, in 2008 it moved online. So really, every aspect of that story from this outrageous claim that Batboy was captured and sent to Afghanistan, to calling itself tongue-in-cheek the world's only reliable newspaper, to it 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 20 years as a whole. Yeah. And we're going to dig into that. I think it's funny 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 fan fiction. I mean, it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend, but that's why it's funny that they said that they're the only reliable thing. Yeah. They said, well, we might as well just say that in the thing. Get it? Yes. 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. Could be made up, which would be kind of like this apropos. Meta-parody of the whole thing. Yeah. But he said, if our readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Oh, really? So they were well aware. That's great. And it is an

extreme example, but there are some aspects of the Weekly World News that do fit the bill of a standard tabloid. Oh, yeah, sure. So I mean, let's talk about it. What is a tabloid? Well, should we start at the beginning, or should we just talk about it a little bit, then do the history? Do you want to do the history first, man? Yeah, let's do the history first. Proof positive that we don't practice this. No. So I did see there was one slight error. This is an Ed Grabinowski article, which are always great. Yeah. But did you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with the pill company? No. In the late 1800s, apparently Burroughs Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England. They produced, at the time, like medicines were

all like BC powder, goodies powder, they're all powdered. And he, I think was the first one to make into a pill by compressing the powder. And he called it a tabloid. Of cocaine. Probably was. And that word became to mean anything, figuratively, that was a small dose of anything. So the word tabloid actually came before, I believe, about 10 years before the shrunken newspaper, the physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the origin of life on earth comes from another planet, 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. Yeah. Then it was associated with newspapers. The tabloid paper

is printed on a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint. Called a broadsheet. Right. Yeah. So the tabloid is a smaller, more compact version. The broadsheet is longer and wider. Yeah. And then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper, hence the word. Yeah. So at first it was a pill. Right. Then it became the size of the paper. And then later on it just became the style of the paper. Right. And size, but really the style. But tabloids, as we're explaining them, are basically like they're also commonly referred to as rags, as gutter publications. Gossip rags. Yeah. They're gossip sheets, whatever. It's basically, it's a slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper. And tabloids, one of the ways that they exist and

always have existed is in comparison to, quote, legitimate newspapers. Yeah. So like originally newspapers that say like the beginning, the early 19th 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. Really dry, man. If you ever read these old New York Times articles, it'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. Yeah. The AP always did that. Yeah. It was sort of straight up news. It was like who, what, when, how, where, and why. The old journalistic pyramid. Exactly. And then like maybe a quote in there and that was it. 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. Yeah, because I couldn't afford it. Came the predecessors of tabloids called the penny press. Yeah. So they were cheaper and they also did something different. They took stories from just these boring facts, political stories, business stories, that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories. Yeah. And they changed the style of writing. Sentences were shorter. Paragraphs were shorter. Injected a little emotion. Way more emotion. It was designed for that. Like, listen, the triumph of this family over their evil landlord or whatever. Kind of what we see now in mainstream newspapers. Exactly. Yes. A lot of our mainstream media owes quite a bit to the

evolution of tabloids. Agreed. 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. Yeah. Take a bunch of heat and flak for it. And then newspapers like latch on to what they're doing after it becomes co-opted and normal. Yeah. Behind the guys of, you know, where are the upstanding publication? Exactly. Disgusting. Right. I'm disgusted by it all. Yellow Journalism came about in the era of William Randolph Hearst with his New York Journal, later called the New York Journal American. And he was the first person in the United States at least, because I think in England,

it even started out before us, but not mistaken. In England? I think they were kind of like the birth of some of the more tabloid style writing. Okay. But in America, William Randolph Hearst did with, all of a sudden, he started doing some celebrity stuff and some murder and little sensational gore here and there. And he found that it sold really well up until the Depression, when nothing sold really well. Right. Pick up after the Depression when a very monumental figure in tabloid history named Genetta, Generoso Pope. Or Jean Pope. Jean Pope. Junior. He bought a Hearst paper called The New York Enquirer for 75 grand, changed it to tabloid size, started printing, you know, stuff that 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 in the gore and a car crash and thought, wow, people really are disgusting and crazy. So I'm going to give them what they want. And he did. You remember the crime scene photography episode? We talked about Ouija. He and he sold a lot of stuff to Jean Pope. Yeah, I bet. He printed a lot of his like gory crime scene photos. What's his name? Ouija. That's right. Louis Felig, I think, but he went by W-E-E-G-E-E Ouija. Interesting. Yeah. So I said it again. Yeah, I was QA'ing like the executive orders episode. How many times? Like a bunch. You know why? Because it was super interesting. So he starts selling a lot of papers based on this new style and then a guy named Rupert

Murdoch, who you may have heard of, saw or proved that you could actually have pretty wide circulation 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 change the name to the National Enquirer. Boom. Right. The National Enquirer was born. But the Enquirer, as we know it, still wasn't born yet. It was a thing, they were crazy headlines about like interracial sex and lesbianism and like horrible acts of violence, posthumous violence. There is this one headline about a teen ripping the head off of a corpse to get at its gold teeth and always with the gory crime scene photos. Yeah, it's like the pulp comics we're doing too.

Yeah, very much. It was just very tawdry. I mean, if the stuff on the Enquirer today is tawdry, this was just like unfathomable. But the reason it's not is again because of Gene Pope. So he had a lot of competition and not just he, but the whole industry was facing a big problem and that newsstands were starting to dry up. Yeah, sadly. So Gene Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets. Everybody goes to supermarkets. They need to get in there. They're always standing in line at the checkout stand. Right. But he knew like there is no way that any respectable supermarket was going to sell his tabloid, his rag, the Enquirer. So he cleaned the thing up. He added way more, he took a cue from Rupert Murdoch and his News of the World

and added way more celebrity stuff, sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like, you know, nothing gross. The stuff he was talking about before, it was just really, it was more like the senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Right. And there is this guy named James Walcott. He wrote for Vanity Fair and he wrote this article called US Confidentialism, the June 2002 issue of Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition going from, you know, the crime scene photography to astrology overnight so he could get into supermarkets. He said, the Enquirer staff was aghast. It was like asking an experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So that's pretty much how the Enquirer staff took. We got to clean up our

accent and start writing about astrology and celebrity sex scandals. And it wasn't even cleaning up its act that much. It's not like he said, we're going 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 1960s, Gene 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. 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 you're 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 were going to get to this. Might as well bring it up. They look at People Magazine and Us Weekly. Right. Because they have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote unquote, respectable thing to pick up and read. Right. Even though, come on. You ever read a People Magazine? I have. It's sort of tabloid-y at times. It is. And actually, you can thank the star for that. Star used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid. Yeah. And it went over to the glossy format at some point, I think in maybe the late 90s. And it married those two things, glossy People Magazine format with tabloid. And it was enough of a 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, well, people have, 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. Yeah. And look at this person and look at that person. And who wore it better? Plastic surgery disasters. Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. Who wore it better? I know somebody has been reading people. Yeah. When they have the two ladies with the same dress. It's so mean, especially when it's like 82 to 18%. I know. I know. Especially when it's like, you know, it's just mean sometimes. Yeah. I'm going to start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll be like,

who wore it better? Kevin Smith or Podcaster Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith, because I never heard of this other guy. This is the same guy. It's the same dude anyway. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um,

hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the

universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so that's pretty much the 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. Oh, the decline? Yeah. We'll get to that. All right, so before we go on to tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should point out that in 1999, the National Enquirer, the Star of the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News were all purchased by American Media Inc. Like all of those. Just snapped them all up, basically. So we're running the show now. Every big tabloid in the United States was purchased by this one company.

And yeah, I think that's never a good thing, or maybe that's just me being it, you know. Well, that's the funny thing. The title of this sidebar is they control everything you read, unless you don't read any of those things. So the AMI actually, they're the reason the Weekly World News shut down. They were like, okay, this thing's losing money. AMI posted a $160 million loss in 2006 and was facing like a billion dollars in debt until Batboy had to go. Yeah, Batboy went to the internet. Yeah, that makes sense. That's where Batboy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean, tabloids like pornography, you know it when you see it, right? It's tough to define. True. That's

not entirely the case. There are some actual discernible distinctions among tabloids that make a tabloid a tabloid. Agreed. So what are they? 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. You're right. And they latch onto that person and as long as they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person, then they can't be held accountable. And that person is frequently cited as an expert. Sure. A close friend. Sure. I mean, if somebody, it's all the way you present the story. If you're saying, if your whole story is all about how this person said something, it's not really about the story. The story's still there, but you're focusing on this person.

It's like the rule of the tabloid industry. It's kind of a trick though, because you're tricking people into thinking you're reading about a story about Brangelina. When in fact, you're reading a story about a former maid that worked for Brangelina and what they think is true. Right. Or some crazy person who has nothing to do with Brangelina, who like just maybe saw one of them in a coffee shop and like noticed they didn't tip or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Also, like we said, they like to add experts, but the experts are in no way, shape, or form qualified in a lot of ways. They have no credentials, they're not vetted. It's more say like the example Grabbinowski uses is like a Bigfoot enthusiast. If somebody spends

a lot of time searching for Bigfoot, researching Bigfoot, there's no institute out there to qualify them, to give them credentials, but you could reasonably make a case that this person's a Bigfoot expert, right? The thing is, is like the Enquirer 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 they will get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop and they will say, did she look, 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. Witnesses say she looks strung out and like she had not eaten for days. Right. And all they have to do is say yes. Exactly. Yes. Or like, would you say this? And if the person says yes, then you just said that. Another hallmark of tabloids is making a huge deal out of something, I guess other newspapers would consider small, right? Backpage stuff. Yeah. And like actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting story and then blowing it up into possibly a front page feature just by getting into the story and really interviewing a lot of people involved and then maybe throwing an

expert or something like that and just basically making a lot of hay out of something very kind of negligible. Yeah. 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 man saved a goat from a burning building. Awesome. To what these people think about this man and his goat. Yeah. And you can do anything with that. Exactly. The love affair, you mean? Maybe. Who knows. If somebody said it, then they could conceivably report it. Yeah. If anyone said it. Yeah. Celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of tabloids these days at least. And they, the writers have informants, all kinds of informants from

security people who had worked for them or who work 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 I remember we shot, you ever heard of Janet Charlton? No. You might recognize her. She was a 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 LA. And she was there hanging out. And I was like, you got to 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 and his secret sex addiction. And she always said like, well,

you know, my sources tell me. And she had a list, a Rolodex of people on the bankroll 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. Right. And it's, that's pretty much standard. Like you were saying, there's this guy named Paul McMullen, who wrote for I think News of the World. And you know, Denil Elliott, he was, he was Indiana Jones' sidekick. I don't remember his name, but the older British guy. Yeah, yeah. Okay. He was just this huge star in Great Britain. And he had a very, very beloved, too. And he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin. And after he died, she took like a big turn for the worse. And this cop tipped off, I think another person who in turn tipped off Paul

McMullen. But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it. That this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute. She's so much of a heroin addict. So whatever you want to do with that, Paul McMullen, Paul McMullen goes and like offers to pay this lady, like drug money for sex or whatever. And she agrees. And like all of a sudden, he starts reporting on it. Wow. He's got photos and everything while she ended up killing herself. Oh my God. And he now says like, you know, I take responsibility for that, which is meaningless. Sure. But yeah, he, it all started with a cop knowing about this and then tipping off the reporters. That's so sad. It is. But cops are not immune to this kind of thing too. Believe it or not. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast Frosted Tips

with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Josh, another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. From what I've gathered, you fall into three categories. You either fight, fight the tabloids. You either are smart enough to be low profile and you're not really

a subject of tabloids. There's a lot of big stars you never seen the tabloids. Harrison Ford. Yeah. 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 what restaurant I'll be coming out of one night. You can photograph me, give you your little time, and sometimes movie studios will leak stuff to get up a little press. They did that 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 its position through things like just basically

you're a star because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such thing as bad press. You might be in there for your cellulite, but what if someone picks up the magazine and they're like, oh, I wonder what ever 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 about myself. Exactly. So I guess one of the ways that you stay in the tabloids is through having your picture made. As we say here in the south. A group of people known collectively as paparazzi. And they actually, I found out, are named after a paparazzo photographer. You didn't know that? Named paparazzo with a capital P. He was a character

in Fellini. Fellini's La Dolce Vita. That's right. Movie. And apparently they were already extant, but they got their name through this character. But even then, they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the 70s. Right. Again, thanks to Gene Pope that they really became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today. And it was all because Gene Pope was obsessed with Giacchio and Aristotle. Oh, really? And he would pay so much money for anything on them that the photographers were just really, really became aggressive and assertive because 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 Europe. Right. And that still is connected to this

day to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly, well, their driver had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased by a paparazzi. On motorcycles. Yeah. Very sad. But that's all generous of Pope Jr. I'll bet that guy wore huge glasses, thick ones, like Robert De Niro at the end of Casino. Yeah, God, those were great. Supposedly, Fellini too, I dug this up, took the word from an Italian word that described the buzzing sound of a mosquito. Oh, that's nice. That's unverified, but he said in an interview in Time Magazine in the 70s that he was like, yeah, I always just associate it with something buzzing around you and in your way. Yeah. Like, well, that's paparazzi. And there's that movie too. Paparazzi.

Is that what it was called? 2004. Yeah, where the dude, what's his face, goes back and beats up. Cole Hauser. Yeah. Did you see it? Not bad. No, I ran across it on IMDB today. It's not bad at all. It's also, it could very easily be based on the life of Alec Baldwin. Yeah, sure. Or Sean Penn. Yeah. Yeah, because I think the categories you were describing, the people who are just so big that they can't keep a low profile, but they also don't want or need the tabloids on them. But I've also very much gotten the impression it's like, there's a lot of people out there who feed it to them, who want it, who crave it. And I can't feel bad for those people at all. Yeah, it's a tough thing. Because there are people plenty,

like you're saying, plenty of people out there who are big stars, but you never see anything about them in the tabloids. It's because they just stay out of it. They stay away from it. 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 Harrison Ford is a good example, I guess. Yeah. Except when he started dating Callista Flockhart, they were in the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect, like most of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand-holding things. Yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot because of her weight. So that fed into that. Yeah. Like maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that she has Harrison Ford. Yeah, he's just like, eat this. Eat that too.

Here, eat this. All right, let's talk about the law. Yeah. Because this was really interesting, I thought. Because the first thing you think of is... Wait, the rest of it was not interesting at all. No, 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, one's like, oh, what were they called? Like Confidential, I think, was one of the early tabloids. Yeah. Like the Tatler. Just whatever stupid name about not about Erring Dirty Laundry. That was the name of some pulp tabloid in the 50s and 60s. Dirty Laundry was probably one of them. I'll bet. And they got away with that stuff

because, well, for two reasons. This guy wrote... Bill Sloan. Yeah, he wrote, I watched a wild hog eat my baby, which is pretty much this definitive history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides because he was an editor for the National Enquirer. And he said, there's two reasons in the 50s and 60s. One, if you were a legitimate star, these things were so in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic in one. It was the attention that lawsuit would attract because the regular press was going to start talking about it. 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, even if you won, that publisher doesn't have the money to pay

you. Yeah, good luck. Then Gene Pope, once again, changes everything. Gene Pope and Rupert Murdoch. All of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. I think Gene Pope took the Enquirer from like 15,000 or 100,000 to 5 million at its peak in the 80s. So, that suddenly they did have deep pockets and things changed. And Carol Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like a bellwether for the celebrities versus the tabloids as far as the law goes. Yeah, she sued and after a 1976 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. She traipsed around the place offering everyone a bite of her dessert,

and they didn't put her dessert in quotes I would have. But 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 sued. He's a big fan probably. Yeah. And she sued and won $1.6 million, 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, very quietly. Well, she got a big settlement, because in 1981 dollars, $1.6 million is like a hundred billion today, I think. And then it was reduced by an appeals court, which is usually step two in these kind of suits.

Yeah, like 200 grand? Yeah, and then it was settled out of court, so I would imagine for even less than that. But it was still, it was a big deal. It was the first time really that a major star was able to win a defamation lawsuit against a tabloid, but it was one of the, I don't want to say it was one of the only times, but 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. All right. Because things have changed now. Now the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators, where if you want 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

court. So like when Aretha Franklin, or no, Elizabeth Taylor, when she tried to sue, I think, the inquirer, or when she did sue the inquirer, the inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records. For the past 30 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. Yeah. It's this celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New York Times article, Vincent Cieffo. Yeah, everyone's Italian. Everybody is Italian. Said it's basically, he calls it the scorpion defense, which is you don't attack a scorpion because you will get stung, aside from... It's 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 don't mess with the two-year-old, you'll get thrown up on. Or bitten, pooped on. They'll get pooped on. That's what they should use, because a scorpion can only do one thing. A two-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? What? Really? And apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there, people like doing this with scorpions, like setting them on fire, and then the scorpion will like jump about and like sting itself and eventually die.

What? Probably trying to put the fire out. They found 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 trying to like, they're flailing about, and one of the flails is like 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, man. All right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids. It's just mean. That's exactly right. And it means you're setting yourself up for being a sociopath later in life. Also, legally speaking with tabloids, 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. Yeah, because it's got to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They 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. Those are the two differences. Or I guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. So basically, the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first thing they're going to do is start filing motions to delay, to delay, to delay. Make you spend a lot of money. A lot of money. 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 sue them. And basically, the first tactic is the tabloids try to make it not worth your while. 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, and the tabloids don't care. Even if they drag this thing out and print a retraction six months later, no one remembers, no one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well, six months later, that's a well put because apparently part of the judgment of some of these in successful suits is that you can't write about this star for a set 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 Cruz, one year from now set reminder to start effing with him again. And another way that tabloids stay out of court is most of their articles are read, screened by an attorney or attorneys they have on retainer. So each article that's printed kind of comes with this implicit stamp of approval from a legal expert who's saying like, you really don't have a case if you want to sue against this. Yeah. They want to walk right up to the line of libel and stop there.

And they're pretty good at it. And then you're in hate on it. And then you're in hate 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, yep, this is not libelous. Prove it. Right. Spend half a million dollars trying to prove this. And some people do. Like Aretha Franklin, I think settled Tom Cruz, Swartz and Egger, Katie, Kate Cruz. Yeah, just in March. They've all sued in one. Did she win? Because Katie Holmes just filed in March against the star 50 million.

She settled for a donation to her charity. Nice. Unless she has done it twice. She did it just this past March. She filed suit against them for this one cover. About the drugs. Yeah, bags under her eyes. And they're like, Katie's drug problem. Why she won't leave Tom, all this. And also the article kind of goes after Scientology. And big mistake. Well, based on that list, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruz, Katie Holmes, it makes you wonder like, I wonder how much Scientology encourages suing for defamation in articles that also include,

you know, stuff against Scientology. Yeah. Because Travolta just had the big row with his little supposed Todry affairs here in Georgia. Right. And then I guess another homework that'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 way that they do it often is very much unethical and immoral as far as the standards of the press is concerned.

And that's what Rupert, what's been going on with Rupert Murdoch, like a parliamentary panel basically said, you're not fit to run news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge with the phone hacking scandal. Oh, yeah. Where I can't remember 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 voicemail and then deleting them. So the police thought she was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course of the investigation.

They identified 4,000 celebrities, athletes, politicians, people of note whose emails were hacked, 4,000, and then another 1,000 that had likely been hacked. Some people have already sued and one like Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan of 24-hour party people and Tristan Shandy. Some people have already won, but for the most part these people aren't going to get any damages awarded. It's basically just no news of the world shut down now. But it was out of hand and now they're showing that they were also hacking email,

which Great Britain has this computer theft law now which makes email hacking way worse than phone hacking. So if that opens up to be a big thing, people are actually going to start doing time for it. Good. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do. Over the years, we'll mention a few.

O.J. Simpson case, the National Enquirer, and it seems like it's generally the Enquirer that sort 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 story about his shoes, the Bruno Mollies. Yeah. They scooped the story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar to the murder weapon.

Yeah. I guess they're a knife dealer. The way they scooped the shoe story, remember their bloody footprints? I thought this was awesome. They really went to town because there was a Bruno Mollie bloody footprint at the scene. And O.J. Simpson said, I've never owned a pair of shoes like that. Did they show a picture? They went back and found footage of him from like 1993, wearing them on the field,

like reporting from a football game and proved that yes, indeed, he did have those shoes. And he was like, oh, those shoes. Right, yeah. Bill Cosby's kid, Ennis, remember when he was killed? Yeah, that's him. The Enquirer offered $100,000 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.

Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child in 2001, he came out and was like, yeah, I guess he found out. It's true. Yes. Gary Hart, when he was running for president in 1988. I remember this well. He was on the monkey business down in Miami with what was her name? Donna Rice.

Yeah. It's such a funny photo when you look at it now. 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 all over the place at the time. But he dropped out of the race. It was because of this picture in the Enquirer. They scooped everybody on it.

And Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, my favorite drug addict that was exposed, Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, I remember he was buying Oxycontin from his maid. Lots. It was on like, how many pills a day? He bought, I don't know how many a day, but he bought apparently 30,000 pills from her. I think he was on like some ungodly amount, like 20 or 60 or 80 pills a day. Just, so I remember hearing it.

It was like, how is he alive? Or even not standing up. Yeah. Yeah, but that was the Enquirer that did that. But again, so there could be, it could have come from a tip, right? Yeah. It could have come from the maid. Yeah, they could have 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 they'll follow sometimes looser ethics than maybe, again, a New York Times reporter. So tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned, at the peak, the National Enquirer was selling about 5 million copies in circulation. Now, all of the leading ones in the United States combined sell about 5.4 million. So they've really gone down and one of the reasons why is because they were so successful that mainstream media became much more tabloid-y. Yeah.

And tabloids became much less different than mainstream news. The field of competition increased. Yeah. And basically, everyone was doing similar stuff now. And Ed pointed out in the article during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you were seeing on CNN was just as salacious as anything you would read in The Star. And again, it's like the mainstream media took a cue from tabloids as they have so many other times before.

I think they were so pissed off about that. What? With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's make up some stuff. Let's like, what if he used a cigar and they were like, no. Well, that was the crazy stuff about. Yeah, exactly. It was all true with Clinton. Man, that was nuts.

Looking back. Yeah. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, then that's tabloids, Chuck. Tabloids. Ta-da. 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 HouseStuffWorks.com, which means it's time for Listener Mail. All right, Josh. I'm going to call this, Don't Cry For Me, with Josh and Chuck. Hi, guys. I'm currently working in Argentina, conducting research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted to let you know that your podcast serve as a great resource for English learners in other countries. I've been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet

who are interested in furthering their English and learning more about U.S. culture. Nice. Yeah, a little scary, too. The 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? Yeah.

Okay. That's good stuff. Your podcast is providing a fun, informative way for students here to practice listening to different English accents. We try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes to learn new vocabulary. Boy, I feel a lot of heat all of a sudden. 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 a part of U.S. culture that I'm proud to share. And thank you very much for that.

Spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela Hartley. That's very nice. Thank you very much for that. We're becoming cult-like figures, like Rodriguez. Who? There's this singer-songwriter from, I think, the late 60s, early 70s, and he just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple albums that just totally flopped here. Uh-huh. And he just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in South Africa, these two albums achieved, like, just incredible status over there.

Really? And everyone wondered what happened to him. And finally, years later, he found out, like, he's like a mythical figure in South Africa. Really? And now there's a documentary that just came out about the whole time. It sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary. Well, it sounds like a feature film.

I know. Like something someone would make up. I saw a movie like that. You mean I went to Silver Docs and saw The Imposter. Oh, yeah. You recommended that. It was very much like that, where one of the producers afterwards at the Q&A was like, he was asked if they were going to turn it into a feature film. He was like, we can't. There's just too many. It's too outlandish that if you fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid.

Why did you make these choices? Ooh, I want to see it. Yeah, you should. It's very good. Awesome. Okay. If you have a doc recommender, a documentary recommendation, so I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation. A docurec. Thank you. We're always looking for that.

Is that correct docurec? Because I think I've seen that written before. Really? Yeah. I just made it up. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can email us your recs to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio.

For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, k-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app,

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