[ static ] i think you need to look at the enquirer in terms of the realm of Popular Culture rather than in the realm of journalism. I think this is a bad time not just for the press. But its a bad time for the truth. I just want to start a flame in your heart i dont want to Set The World On Fire i just want to start a flame in your heart in my heart, i have but one desire and that one is you no other will do ba, da, da ive lost all ambition for worldly acclaim i just want to be the one you love and with your admission that youd feel the same ill have reached the goal im dreaming of, believe me in my heart, i have but one desire that one is you no other will do lantana, florida, population 7,126, according to the last census, an undistinguished South Florida town on us 1 about 10 miles south of palm beach, florida, an unlikely place, youd think, to be the home of one of americas most successful publishing enterprises, and yet lantana, florida, is the home of the National Enquirer. Calder gene pope was a force of nature. Virga he knew what he wanted to do, and it was that paper, and he wanted to sell the most papers of anybody in the world. Regan Generoso Pope very cleverly identified a way to communicate with massmarket america. How he communicated it was studied by others, adopted by others, which set the stage for what was to come. Wallace and you know as well as i do that there are allegations that mafia money has been behind the enquirer since the beginning. Right. Ive heard. Ive read that. Calder Generoso Pope jr. Was the son of Generoso Pope. Gene pope was born into privilege. His father owned il progresso, an italianlanguage paper in new york. Because of that, he was a huge political figure in america. Gene was a Child Prodigy in many ways. I mean, at 16, he was helping to run il progresso. His father became one of the most powerful guys in new york. He pretty much controlled the italian vote. Along the way, he became a made guy in the mafia. When his father died, gene was the Heir Apparent for taking over the newspaper his father owned. Pope iii il progresso was not the kind of newspaper he wanted to do. He wanted to form a newspaper in his own image just like his father had done it. Calder he wanted to buy the new york enquirer, which was a crappy little paper, mainly racing and sports, but he needed 75,000 to buy it. Believe it or not, gene popes real godfather was the godfather, frank costello, who was a big guy in the mob obviously. Pope iii thats where he got the money, and it was an interestfree loan. Why . Because he was like family. Its a very italian thing. And that was the start of the enquirer. Sternig he immediately put the Word National on it. He envisioned Publishing Mounds and mounds and mounds of National Enquirers. He was looking for something to sell more copies. Youre fine i want you to be mine, oh calder one day, he was driving on one of the new york highways, and there was an accident ahead, and everybody slowed down. Theyre all rubbernecking, and theyre looking at the side of the road. Pope iii and he looked at the crowd, and he saw all these people staring at a really gory scene. I think youre swell come close, hold tight calder he went, my god, nobodys doing pictures of that. Send me he suddenly realized, this is what i have to do. Tonight and every night i got to make a gore rag. Youre slick so what he did is that he went to the police department. He basically got first dibs on the photography of these horrible accidents, and thats how it started. I think youre i got to tell you, when i first saw it, sometimes it was hard to pick up. Come close hold me tight send me tonight and every night youre slick but circulation went up dramatically. It took off, but it was a little uncomfortable. He realized that gore was only gonna take him so far. Circulation peaked at 1 million, but he dreamed actually of 20 million, by the mid60s, many, many people were moving to the suburbs, so they werent stopping at newsstands, and the idea was, weve got to get it in front of more people. Well, where are the people . Narrator there is madness in the marketplace. Just listen to this. [ Cash Register dings ] we zeroed in on supermarkets as the one area where i suppose some member of every family unit in the United States comes once a week at least. Calder he wanted to be in racks at the front end of every Checkout Counter in the United States. People told him, great idea, but you cant do this. A gore paper, how could that get to supermarkets . People would throw up just at a time when they were about to buy milk, you know . It was totally impossible. So we drastically in one fell swoop eliminated all the gore. From the moment he started, he never stopped playing with it, trying to change the format to find the winning formula. Wallace in came headlines like these. Celebrity news. Gossip items. Dogs. Pets. Diets. Medicaloddity stories. Psychic stories. I happened to discover that jimmy carter had once seen a ufo. Wright geewhiz stories. We did one on making cars out of lobsters. We had some guy called up wanting to know where he could buy one. Calder our headlines, our pictures, our front page, and all of them had to be a triggering mechanism to get peoples attention first, and if they liked what they saw, they bought it. Regan Generoso Pope really understood the psychology of the average american person. He used to call the reader of the National Enquirer missy smith in kansas city. Wright she was the standard by which every story in the National Enquirer was judged. The basic american woman. Regan she was somebody who had family values, who loves stories, loves celebrities and wanted to know essentially that celebrities suffered, too. Coz mrs. Smith goes to the beauty parlor, talks to her girlfriends. They were all chatting about celebrities. Dolly parton is depressed, or Elizabeth Taylor got fat again and cant find love. She would go, ugh, and have to read all about it. We were missy smith in kansas city. I guess im a little nosy. We were missy smith in yonkers. They cant print something in there thats not true. We were missy smith everywhere. I just enjoy the headlines. She was our boss. She could make or break us. Coz missy smith has had a long week at work. She gets her National Enquirer. She goes home. She has a bath. She has a glass of wine, and she sits down and enjoys herself. I feel a Great Sadness that i will not be here in this Office Working on your behalf to achieve those hopes in the next 2 1 2 years. Wright the enquirer was a nice window to look through, a Pleasant Place to go after the harsher news in the real world. Reporter guns, ammunition, explosives and at least one pipe bomb. [ Siren Wailing ] brenna i dont think pope wanted the outside world to spill over into the enquirer. Our philosophy, i guess youd call it, is basically that, in all the other media, the people are getting all the bad news today. Theyre getting swamped with it, inundated with it, and i think theyve just about had it. I think theyre searching for something thats gonna tell them theres a good side to life. Everything isnt bad. Auletta the National Enquirer was a place where, you know, facts were not important. What was important was eyeballs. The universe that is described in edition after edition of the National Enquirer is a. Nonexistent universe in terms of reality. Its always been fakeish. In other words, there was a nub of truth to most of the stories that printed. Things were exploded. Youd just take a story, and you make it more interesting. You just sensationalize it. Thats what tabloids do. Wright Generoso Pope decided that he wanted to move the enquirer out of new york. And in 1971, we moved to florida. Brenna walking into the Enquirer Office at that time was through a beautiful, tropical garden. And you walk in to this gigantic newsroom, which is buzzing. [ Telephone Ringing ]. Editors who are bent over their desks and calling all over the world. Is this overseas from melbourne, australia . Well, we have some questions on that ufo story. Everybodys typing. Everybodys furiously on the phone. It was like a journalistic beehive. Controlled chaos. [laughing] it really was. Virga Rotary Phones and ashtrays. Brenna cigarettes and cigars everywhere. God knows why we didnt all have lung cancer, but it was a place that got your adrenaline going. [ Typewriter Keys Clacking ] it was such a great vibe. It was so exciting. It was so crazy, and you just thought, maybe i want to be a part of this. [ Typewriter Keys Clacking ] [ telephones ringing, Typewriter Bell Dings ] wallace The City Room has a decidedly fleet street accent. I have but a moment to reach henry green. And why do you liken hoover to a european dictator . Okay, john. This is story 207. Wallace pope likes london journalists schooled in scandal and the various successes of the british penny press. British reporters were a lot more aggressive, a lot more capable of doing unorthodox things. Were guys who were raised on checkbook journalism, underhand tactics, but we were not scumbags. Number one under gene pope is iain calder. I was looking for, like, uktype reporters, and the only reason i needed them was i couldnt find great reporters in america. We were an Uphill Battle to try to get them to come and work for the enquirer. The reputation of the enquirer was terrible. I honestly thought, would it be easier to tell people i was in prison or a Mental Hospital for a couple years . When i first joined the paper, it was kind of a joke, really. We thought they were kind of tacky. Coz i went to harvard to become a writer, and as my mother said, no way. You cant go from Harvard To The National Enquirer. george the prospect of writing for a National Audience was pretty thrilling, i mean, even though it was the National Enquirer. But the reality was different. These people are promising to triple my salary and send me around the world. I need to be. A little bit reckless. Wright you didnt have to ask to hire a plane or a boat or a house or anything else. You just did it. George the owner would hand them bags of money, and they were on a private jet to paris. Brenna maui. George monaco. Wright puerto vallarta. Villa cabamba. Were staying in a luxury hotel, got the penthouse. Haley what about a temple of snakes in india . Can you get out today to hong kong . Balfour the world was our oyster. That was the marvelous thing about the enquirer. Brenna range of stuff was terrific. It was more than any newspaper or magazine that i had worked for ever offered. It was all about the story. Get the story and dont come back until you have it. The National Enquirer at its zenith was a spy network. You couldnt go into hospital without somebody calling the enquirer, because they were all getting paid. Brenna the average snitch with just a silly little tip would be getting 300 bucks. If the tip made the cover, it was more like 5,000, 6,000, 10,000. Were talking about big bucks. Haberman i mean, you were not supposed to pay for news. You know, when i was at the new york post, you would pay for photos, but thats very, very different. A lot of outlets do that. You do not pay for information. Coz the Mainstream Media went after us saying we paid sources. We said, yes, we do. Listen. If theyve got the information, they should be paid for it. Regan when i started at the National Enquirer as a reporter, i didnt know very much about the world, and one of the great heartaches of my experience there was to see that if you were famous, if you were rich, if you were a celebrity, that people in your orbit would undoubtedly one day betray you for money, and the thing that shocked me was that it was always the people close to you who would betray you the most. Lighting every soccer match at shell energy stadium. Were moving forward with the houston dash. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. Lighting every soccer match at shell energy stadium. Were moving forward with the houston dash. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. You ready . Showtime. This is gonna be epic. [ barking ] its what the poster said. Do you want to make out or . Nope. I meant yes. Hes a bon garcon. I give amazing spongebaths. Can i get a room . [ chuckling ] chefs kiss. Sternig i had a story about bob hope, and it was about all of his philandering and some of his mistresses and all this, so i wrote it up. I submitted it. Mr. Pope got it, and he said to me, barbara, i dont think america wants to know this about bob hope, and he killed the story. Mr. Pope killed the story. There had to be some advantage that they would get out of killing a story. Theres a scandal . Theres a negative story . Oh, in exchange, well do bob hope at home. Well make a deal with you to do nice stories, and youll cooperate with us, and well take beautiful pictures, and all that other stuff will go away, and then youd have an ongoing relationship with them. Its like getting them on the hook, and then they have to keep giving you these positive stories. Its protection money, and thats how the mafia works. Calder we were the only people that celebrities had to fear if they did something wrong. They had to worry about the enquirer knowing cause we knew i wouldnt say everything, but we knew a heck of a lot. Man 2 okay. All right. Well see. Man 3 and there were several people with him, and we dont have the information yet as to who. Balfour some of the things that we did to get a story blurred the lines of legality, i would say. I mean, ive done dirty tricks. Oh, my lord. Brenna phones were bugged by private detectives employed by the enquirer. Peoples mail was sometimes being read, taken out of letter boxes and opened and resealed and what have you. Haley was there things that were done that were questionable, outright illegal . Maybe. Ive loved him for nine years sternig elvis was everything to an enquirer reader. Balfour Elvis Presley could make or break a whole tabloid. It could make or break a whole tabloid reporters career. Reporter 2 Elvis Presley, the longtime king of rock n roll, is dead. I was in the office in 1977 when elvis died. The news broke about 5 00 in the afternoon, and by 5 45, there were six of us on a Learjet Heading for memphis. There was one extra bag on the plane, and that bag contained 50,000 in cash. We bought up almost everybody. Reporter 3 the huge crowds have become steadily bigger throughout the day. The families say they want the funeral to be quiet, to be dignified, and to be a family affair. Brenna pope had a very strange mentality. He wanted to know all the ins and outs of peoples deaths. Whats the ultimate picture that youre gonna get of elvis . Elvis in the coffin. Wright that was an operation that was highly secret, went on for days and days and days. Coz so all the relatives were in line at his casket to bid him farewell. We dressed up a portly, older british gentleman as a priest, and he was in line. He got to the casket. And underneath his robe, he had a little miniature camera. [ Camera Shutter Clicks ] but he couldnt get high enough to get the picture, so we didnt have that. One of our photographers saw elvis cousin going to a local bar. And he followed him in, and as the guy is standing there, he says to him, howd you like to make a lot of money . Guy says, oh, id love to make he said, if i gave you a camera, could you get a picture of elvis in his coffin . Sure. Wright unfortunately, it didnt work the first couple of times, and he had to make excuses to go back and pay his respects over and over again. The first picture is a picture of the guy taking the picture. He had turned it round the wrong way. Okay. Second one picture of the chandelier. I go, oh, my god. The third one was just brilliant. It was the perfect pageone picture. We sold 6. 9 million copies that week. People were stealing copies. This was so huge. Lets go Ballroom Blitz Sternig mary jane buys the paper. She gives it to mom. Mom gives it to niece. Niece gives it to her husband. There were 25 million readers a week. Wright the enquirer had so much mail that they had their own zip code 33464. Calder thousands and thousands of letters a day. We were bigger than Time Magazine. We were bigger than newsweek. We sold more copies than anyone else. Oh, yeah this is your favorite magazine, the National Enquirer. Carson here we go again. Ballroom blitz at the National Enquirer, we uncover more dirt than anyone except possibly this hoover cleaner with attached tools and hose. It may even get more dirt than we do. When we had a major front page and it sold really well, i maybe had 10 minutes of euphoria. Then i would remember i had to find a great front page that was gonna sell 4 1 2, 5 million copies. So every single week, it just went on and on and on like that. Reporter 5 when his body was found last week, police said john belushi at the age of only 33 had died of Natural Causes and that there was no foul play. When somebody dies, its like, okay. Lets badmouth them as much as possible. Lets put it in the enquirer. john belushi dying was a big story, but we always wanted to do the story behind the story. Thats what sold papers. So i picked two really great reporters. Tony brenna and i, who was my partner in that. I think haley was a very competent journalist, even by enquirer standards. We wanted to know what happened that night, and there was this Mystery Woman whose name wasnt released. They called her Cathy Silverbags because she sold drugs out of a silver purse. Reporter 6 Cathy Evelyn Smith listed her profession as backup singer. Police questioned but then released her. So smith, a 35yearold rocknroll groupie, went home to toronto. We then went up to canada to find cathy smith. We spent about 10 days in a hotel room. And the story came in, and i say, you know, this woman is saying that she killed john belushi. Shes not saying it. I said, i want that headline. I said, go back and get her to say, i killed john belushi, on tape. So we spent the next week partying with her. We ran up an enormous hotel bill and had a great time and became her best friend. And she didnt want to say it. Haley tony had a Tape Reporter going. I had one going. She would say, yeah. We were responsible for his death, but i we cant say that. I said, oh, come on, catherine. Lets get this over with. You killed the guy, under any circumstance. You shot him up with heroin and cocaine, and he died, and she said, well, if you want me to say that, i killed him. Turn off the tape. Brenna and click. You know, brenna turns his tape off. I leave mine running. So i ended up taping her confessing to the murder. Calder so anyway, they got her to say it. We ran this frontpage story, i killed john belushi. Haley its the murder confession. Its all the details. She was John Belushis Florence Nightingale with a needle. Well, its not something cathy smith is going to say. Its not something most people are gonna say, but you say, you know, you were sort of like a Florence Nightingale with a needle. Thats what youre saying. She says, yeah. Thats right. She was being fed a quote. Thats how it works. Brenna we knew that what she was saying was gonna be selfincriminating and that she would probably be arrested for it, and she was. So the Prosecutors Office went nuts. Reporter 7 in an enquirer article written by brenna and haley, smith appears to confess to injecting belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine. Brenna and for the next six months, i was in front of a grand jury. Haley i mean, this was the first time that National Enquirer reporters had to show up by subpoena to a grandjury Murder Investigation on a major celebrity. It was stressful. I felt that we had crossed the line on that story. We had, uh, gone too far in becoming her friend, and i felt we had sold her out, and i felt that particularly so when she actually went to prison. John belushis story would be one of the occasions that got to be ethically challenging. [ Crowd Cheering ] sternig becoming a famous celebrity is a tradeoff. You want the public to admire you. Thats not free. Thats not free. You have to give, in return, some access to your life. What you give up is anonymity. I had a contact in las vegas who tipped me off that cosby was keeping a girl. And she was a showgirl. He bought a house for her, and he would go up to vegas and visit her. So i ordered a stakeout, a photographer we had in vegas, and he caught cosby going into the house, coming out of the house with the girl, kissing her at the door all of this. And i had a couple other contacts of mine who were able to confirm this story. I wrote it up, gave it into my editor. Mr. Pope saw the story, and he said, shes got to go and call cosby. This was the time that he was americas dad. He had The Cosby Show on television. Id been on the set many times. I interviewed all the other people on there, and i thought, oh, my god. If i have to call cosby up now they said, you got to call him, so i called him, and he, of course, said, whats the name of your Executive Editor . And i told him, and he said, what number can i reach him . I gave him the number. He said, thank you very much, and he hung up. He proceeded to call iain calder, who cut a deal with cosby to kill my story in exchange for a couple of sitdown interviews with any reporter except barbara sternig, and that was kind of the end of my relationship with The Cosby Show. Shipp for a long time, we killed stories about bill cosby. I got some stories. Little starlets who were on his show, they would call in, you know, he did this. He did that. I would go to my editor, and i would put a lead in about the story, and it gets approved or not approved. I never heard about it again. It was never seen again. You ask about it, and well say, well get back to you, but you learned, at least for me early on i was brandnew. Im still trying to prove myself you didnt push it. Calder i was making trades that would make our readers happier, but i had to make that decision myself. Whats the Better Stories . We were keen on any story that would sell papers. Theres a sort of nasty little characteristic that people have. They get a little jealous of success. They want to see somebody taken down a peg or two. Brenna its like in ancient rome, okay . They cheer them when they are famous, and they cheer them when theyre doing well, but when things go wrong, they give them the thumbsdown and say, good riddance. To hell with them. Actually hes a color and theyre all coming . Those who are still with us, yes. Grandpa whats this . Your wings. Light em up gentlemen, its a beautiful. Day to fly. The future is here. Weve been creating it for more than 100 years, putting the most advanced technology into peoples hands. Generation after generation. Tool after tool. Again and again. Bringing you the most Reliable Network of authorized sales and service dealers. Always moving forward. We lead. Others follow. Wes, friends like Warren Beatty and allowed them other hollywood stars. And the thought was that he was going to win the democratic nomination he was immediate we, are going to select that only a liter were going to select a future regan it was the heartache and the betrayal, and hes cheating, and theyre on ski slopes, and hes bringing the mistress, and the wife is in the hotel room over there. Its a great story, right . Everybody loves it. Bernstein this marla maples donald trump story was occurring at the same time that Nelson Mandela was being released from his years in the south african gulag, an event of tremendous importance to the world. [ cheers and applause ] this was the purest example of the movement from tabloids into the Mainstream Press. And it also tells us something about donald trump and his rise through the sensationalist press. [ woman Speaking Indistinctly ] trump i dont know. Lambiet the biggest tipster ever in the business was donald trump. He would call the tabloids in new york to drop gossip items about himself. Woman 2 right. Okay. Hes had pseudonyms whered he call and pretend that he was a spokesperson. He really wanted to be a star. We recognized that donald trump had value to the National Enquirer because he could sell newspapers. Brenna hes a very, very good snakeoil salesman, and he fit very well with the enquirer. Coz our readers liked him, so we put a gentleman in charge of him, and the gentlemans name was larry haley, and larrys job was basically to keep track of donalds love life. I was offered the use of his plane from West Palm Beach to new york and back on the weekends, comps at all the hotels, you name it never took one of them. Only thing i ever took from him was a can of diet coke at a party at maralago. I think that i probably was being looked at like a publicrelations operation for him, you know, just by manipulating our interest in his celebrity. And it was the constant, 6 00 a. M. Phone calls. You know, i started feeling very quickly that im working for this guy, but im not being paid by this guy, and i had to remind him i dont work for him. Trump married marla, and the two enquirer reporters were vip invitees at the wedding. [ Crowd Cheering ] im happy and excited, and its the wedding of the century. Itll be good. Thank you, robin. Simpson everybody in the country believes that maybe their relationship could work if this relationship will work, you know, with all the things that theyve gone through, and i think this will work. Okay. I give it four months. [ laughter ] howard [ Camera Shutter Clicking ] Donald Donald [ Camera Shutter Clicks ] haley i was there that night. I was confronted by marla maples, and she was telling me that she had gone after donald and got him, and she was mrs. Trump. I said, well, i cant argue with any of that, but, you know, basically, she disliked me greatly, because of a lot of the stuff we revealed about her. But trump never got upset. Even when they were married, as long as it wasnt about him, he was okay. He would throw marla under the bus in a second to not have bad publicity himself and did more than once. Reporter 8 the donaldmarla affair had everything money, power, a blonde bombshell, combined with catchy headlines and family feud. Woman 3 are you two back together . Well, we are right now, arent we, hon . Um. Um. Haley he was a guy we wanted stories from. At the same time, he was studying how we took things, put them into headlines, and sold them to this commonman audience. He wanted to use us as a microphone to a Different Group of people. Coz the American Public starts to become emotionally attached and wants to see whats happening next with this particular celebrity, and he had crossed that line. People now wanted to know about donald trump. Bernstein weve always had in this country a kind of Seamy Underside of the news business. Tabloids. You know, theres nothing new about it. Exactly. And our agenda at newspapers and magazines is increasingly these guys agenda. But we all have the same boss. Its the public, and if we continue this Columbia School of journalism rhetoric, this rag rhetoric which says, people shouldnt be reporting that. They shouldnt be jamming this down peoples throats. My god, let the public decide. Its also very let the public decide walker youre looking down your nose at the public. The public has a right to know what it wants to know. Now, your points welltaken, but we dont all have to be porn publishers. All right. But why no. I dont think that its porn to publish a story about Tonya Harding or Michael Jackson. Whoever wants to put that out there to sell papers, whats wrong with it . Because if the lowest common denominator is gonna drive the journalistic market, were in big trouble. Connie chung let him finish. Ill come back to you, mike. But let me finish. Something has tipped. All right. Coz people come out and criticize us. They call us lowlifes of journalism, give us obnoxious anecdotal names. We didnt care, and i still dont care. We were very good at what we did. Wallace steve coz has been with the National Enquirer for 13 years now. A little more than a month ago, he was promoted to Executive Editor. Virga when steve took over as editor in 1995, it was just new blood willing to listen to new ideas. Steve coz brought the National Enquirer out of the stone age. He brought a lot of credibility to the paper. He didnt look like a scruffy, old guy with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. He was ivy league, dresses in his little polo shirts. He looks polished. You could have gone to Time Magazine and seen somebody who looked just like steve coz. Shipp the enquirer, for the most part, was all white people. They had no minorities. They were these old brits and old white guys who didnt see women or minorities of any importance. We had to go in and fight our way. He encouraged diversity. He encouraged outofthebox thinking. He was a person who knew that growth depended on coming of age. I was brought in to help visualize what Black Readership would like to see. It opened up the Playing Field of who we could go after. Its not the just the same people all the time. Oh, yeah shipp and Oprah Winfrey made the difference. She went across all color lines. Women bought the enquirer more than anybody, and women loved oprah. Oprah was on the cover, gosh, at least once or twice a month. Oprah sold a lot of papers. Whitney houston sold a lot of papers, not because of her talent but because of her drug use. She became front page. Somebody like Michael Jackson broke all stereotypes, all color lines, everything. [ cheers and applause ] everybody loved michael. But we started hearing a lot of stories. We have Family Members that called, close Family Members that called and told us what was going on with him. So we were able to bring in stories that nobody else had. Haberman i think the enquirer has become an emblem and a symbol for some people of a certain type of journalism in this country. I think it is important to note the National Enquirer has also gotten some stories really right. The newspapers used to say, yeah. You get exclusives, but if we were up against you, facetoface, mano a mano, we would beat the hell out of you. Well, okay. O. J. Simpson was the test. On 911 tapes just released last night, o. J. Simpson could be heard screaming about a 1993 article in the National Enquirer. Enquirer editors say they have been following abuse allegations against the former Football Superstar since 1989. Coz when the simpson murders occurred, we knew this was a seminal moment for the National Enquirer. We already had Huge Networks in place in the celebrity community, and this occurred in the middle of one of our networks, so we immediately put every last resource into it. While the Los Angeles Times has four reporters working on the o. J. Simpson story, the National Enquirer has a team of more than 20. Coz we were at the crime scene before the coroner arrived there. We brought in freelancers. We went to every single photographer we knew in l. A. And told them that we would pay them any amount of money for any photographs they thought were relevant. We spent easily over 1 million in source and photographic money. The enquirers tentacles were amazing in those days. From Florida All The Way to l. A. , we were all involved in that story. Reporter 9 Homicide Detectives expanded the restricted area around Nicole Simpsons townhouse today. Nicoles father, louis, and one of her sisters also arrived and removed some personal belongings. We had a reporter who was in really tight with nicoles family. He was dating both the daughters. Haley we had other people who had contacts with the Goldman Family, including ron goldmans mother who lived in st. Louis. Coz we also had a network into some of o. J. Simpsons fellow athletes and, dont forget, o. J. Simpsons friends. We had a very good Working Relationship with the police. We had moles in the Prosecutors Office, and we had jailhouse sources, as well. Calder we knew what he was saying. We knew where he went to the bathroom. I mean, we had everything. We had it totally wired from beginning to end, and it sold. Everyone in the country was riveted by this. Now the National Enquirer is competing with the Mainstream Press, often beating rivals to the punch on big headline stories. A lot of the details that have later turned up in newsweek or on other Television Shows have first been reported in the enquirer. George our stories showed more details on that crime than any other publication. We were constantly on it. It was like a soap opera. You just stay on them, and anything you heard today, whats going on with him now . Haberman it was a story that riveted the nation. It was one of the first cablenews national melodramas, so people were glued to their television sets, and the National Enquirer, essentially, was a Paper Version of a tv. People had to follow them. It was impossible to ignore them. Tesh the enquirers coz says not only do readers love their o. J. Articles, but their commitment to coverage has brought new respect. This is a fascinating, interesting story. The conventional press has basically come into the tabloid territory, and theyve come to appreciate us. King bruno magli makes shoes that looked the shoe that they had in court thats involved in this case. I would have never worn those uglyass shoes. Enquirer reporters were digging out material that the establishment press had missed. Haberman there was a key moment where evidence and the existence of it was broken by the National Enquirer. It had to be followed by most of the major publications in the country. Haley a kid from boulder sends me this polaroid picture of this washedout chainlink fence and this tiny, little stick figure way in the back, and he says, maybe you can blow this up and see if o. J. s wearing the murder shoes, something that the investigators during the murder trial had not done. Finding the Bruno Magli Shoes on o. J. s feet was a mission, and every Single Person in the newsroom was involved in that to some degree. Coz o. J. Said, i never wore those uglyass things, so we spent three months and Tens Of Thousands of dollars hiring every Sports Photographer we could to go look through their old negatives. Virga every photographer who shot every nfl game that o. J. Had been at, we called one by one, slowly but surely, all of them and asked them to look. Larry haley found the guy. About a thousand cops were trying to link the shoes with o. J. Simpson. Mainly, they were trying to do it through finding a purchase. They were right there in buffalo. And there wasnt just one of them. There was a whole frame of o. J. Simpson walking on the sidelines where you can see that sole that left the footprints in blood around Nicole Browns head, right there on that picture. Virga it was like finding the holy grail. It was so exciting. It was like we really did something now that made a difference. Haley o. J. Simpson and his attorneys, when we ran that, were saying that we made this up, that we put the shoes on his feet, right . Three other photographers had pictures from the same game of o. J. Wearing the same shoes. Haley we also had 33 other pictures taken in two different locations, one in pittsburgh where he was getting his shoes shined after a Sideline Commentary in the basement of the hotel across from the stadium. That image was used as the major evidence against o. J. Simpson. Coz it won the Goldman Family and nicoles family the civil trial because o. J. Was found guilty based upon that photo of him in the Bruno Magli Shoes. [ cheers and applause ] those uglyass shoes changed the enquirer immensely, because thats one of times that the Mainstream Media had to give us credit. The mainstream guys suddenly said, uhoh. We wish theyd stayed with ufos. The establishment press finally had to admit that they were being beaten by a sleazy supermarket tabloid. King why. Walter, did you put steve coz and the National Enquirer among the 25 most influential figures in this country . The enquirer has broken a lot of stories. Theyve changed a lot of the ways they do their reporting and their factchecking. Theyve become more respectable, and i think it began to seep in, for better and worse, into the Mainstream Press, what the tabloids do. So it could have been for worse, too. You could be influential for worse. Reporter 10 the line between tabloid and mainstream journalism has become blurred. You know, everyone talks about the Mainstream Press versus the National Enquirer, but you remember, the National Enquirer is the bestselling weekly in america, so whos defining mainstream . O. J. Simpson caused the wheels of traditional journalism to fall off. Thats the moment when traditional journalism begins this fast slide into tabloidism. Lighting every soccer match at shell energy stadium. Were moving forward with the houston dash. Because were moving forward with everybody. Shell. Powering progress. With absorbine pro, pain wont hold you back from your passions. Its the only solution with two maxstrength anesthetics to deliver the strongest numbing pain relief available. So, do your thing like a pro, painfree. Absorbine pro. I dont want you to move. Im gonna miss you so much. You realize well have Internet Waiting for us at the new place, right . Oh, we know. We just like making a scene. Transferring your services has never been easier. Get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. Can i sleep over at your new place . Can katie sleep over tonight . Sure, honey this generation is so dramatic move with xfinity. Princess diana as a parent, i want to protect children, because i brought the children out here for a holiday, and wed really appreciate the space. Man 5 i understand that. Weve had 15 cameras following us today. The National Enquirer was on this incredible roll. We had o. J. Simpson, the jonbenet story, cosby. We had all these great stories. And then in 1997, we have a cover out on the stands which says, sexmad di, i cant get enough. we didnt have the first pictures of she and dodi together on the boat. Another paper had gotten those, so then we bought the second set of pictures of she and dodi on the boat and published them. Probably biggest mistake we ever made unknowingly. We closed on a friday night, and we ran it pretty small on the side, and that paper went to press. And di died that night in the car crash. Man 6 the car was traveling extremely fast in an attempt to escape the attentions of the paparazzi, who were on motorcycles or scooters for reasons we dont yet know. Reporter 11 the accident happened late at night in a road tunnel in paris. An unconfirmed source from the Press Association is that diana, princess of wales, has died. Virga steve was immediately called by cnn, and all everybody wanted a comment because they were all saying the paparazzi were chasing them. But because of that headline on the cover, the enquirer was pulled from every newsstand in america. The enquirer headquarters in lantana was besieged by crowds and crowds of people accusing us of killing princess diana. The real cause of her death was the drunken driver of her limousine, but it was enough to get everyone believing that it was the National Enquirers fault, and we lost circulation. Spencer this is not a time for recriminations but for sadness. However, i would say that i always believed the press would kill her in the end, but not even i could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in her death, as seems to be the case. It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of dianas image, has blood on his hands today. [ indistinct conversations ] clooney princess di is dead, and who should we see about that . The driver of the car, the paparazzi, or the magazines and papers who purchase these pictures and make Bounty Hunters out of photographers . Then it got very personal. Alisters, like George Clooney for example, and others pointing fingers and saying, steve coz, you have blood on your hands. Youre a murderer. You killed the princess. And as for you, mr. Coz, and your colleagues, the princess of wales is dead, and you have gone on television, and you have washed your hands, and you have placed blame, and you have deflected responsibility, and yet i wonder how you sleep at night. You should be ashamed. Thank you. Woman 4 mr. Clooney, will there be questions . Im not going to, thanks. To blame one institution, i. E. The National Enquirer, for the paparazzis on the planet is ridiculous. The paparazzi started and existed before the National Enquirer existed. The thirst for private knowledge about the celebrities is what fuels the paparazzis. Oh, my god. [ Crowd Cheering ] we were, you know, awardwinning journalism for four years, and now suddenly we were blamed for princess dis death, and i personally was blamed. The National Enquirer and their ilk believe they have a right to intrude on your privacy and to make your private life public. Does it sell newspapers . Does it sell magazines . Of course it does, but what are we doing to ourselves with that, and what are we doing to these people . Enquirer, they flirt constantly with the danger of libel suits. Several times a day, Executive Editor Steve Coz Consults with the papers lawyer, a man by the name of david kendall, who also represents the president of the United States. Reporter 12 when are the reports about an officials personal life valid, and what is the impact on the public . Woman 5 what did i say to you guys . Were not coming back. Move back. Reporter 13 have the media gone nuts in covering this story, or is this one of those cases where there is no such thing as too much . The enquirer getting the scoop just weeks after rocking the establishment press by breaking the story of what it called, Jesse Jacksons love child. We didnt go after them. We didnt promote them. We didnt stand up for them. We didnt say, oh, vote for this guy, or, hes a good guy, or, hes a bad guy. They went out, and they did things like cheat on their wife and have affairs with interns or whatever. And thats something that we reacted to, cause thats something people wanted to read. We didnt say, oh, hes a democrat. Hes a republican. Were not gonna get this one. Well leave him alone. Believe me, if we had had george bush doing blow, we wouldve done it. That changed when management changed. That changed when david pecker took over. Reporter 14 two of the nations liveliest tabloids, the National Enquirer and the star, are being taken over by new owners who want to extend the wellknown titles beyond the supermarket. The first time i encountered david pecker was when he arose to the head of a French Media Company called hachette filipacchi. At that time, they had Car And Driver and womans day. His most famous magazine was when he backed jfk jr. In george magazine. George is a magazine that understands that culture is more powerful than politics. The traditional lines between democrats and republicans are disappearing. The magazine theyll turn to for a fresh, nonpartisan perspective will be george. Kelly david pecker insisted that he had to have pictures of himself in with jfk jr. He definitely knew he was latching onto something bigger than himself then. Brenna peckers a man who wants to drive around in limousines, wants to belong to the best clubs, and wants to be known as a celebrity himself. Kelly david pecker was not a journalist. He was brought into media because of his financial acumen. People would call him a bean counter, for want of a better word, a financial guy. In the cultured, highbrow world of media moguls, he was seen as more of a scrappy, Born In The Bronx kind of guy. I think he probably always felt something of an outsider because of that. He always wanted to be a little grander than he was. Auletta he is a short guy who wanted to be taller, and one of the ways you get taller is by being a friend of powerful people and doing them favors, or you do it by savaging people and making people fear you, and hes done both. David pecker had designs on this machine called the National Enquirer early on. He bought the paper in 1999, and the plan was to create a Media Company to rival time, something to be at the forefront of mass media in america. That was his goal, and he stated it right out of the gate. Coz he wants to go to an advertisingdriven vehicle and polish up the tabloids, make them slicker, make them more new york. He wants to sort of drag this tabloid empire upscale. Well, people arent buying the National Enquirer to be upscale. The whole idea was a bad idea. He really never wanted to learn what this animal was that was us. The assets in the enquirer were the people who worked there. And then came the job cuts. You know, he immediately slashed staff. Expense accounts were being scrutinized. Budgets were slashed. There was less content and more filler. Kelly with the enquirer, david pecker knew he had a way to reach middle america, flyby america, supermarket america. Maybe not as influential as it was years earlier, but it was still a Pretty Healthy company when he took over. George in 2001, david pecker built his ami building, which was always his dream. And that was pretty quickly followed by 9 11. That was a confluence of events that changed everything pretty drastically all at the same time. The fbi is searching the site of the first deadly anthrax attack. Reporter 15 that building is in boca raton, florida. It houses the company, American Media incorporated, which publishes tabloid newspapers, including the National Enquirer. The building was sealed off so that the fbi and the cdc can search the facility, looking at packages and mail that may have been delivered to the building. Virga you know, the whole world was in trauma over 9 11, and to have a trauma hit like that a month later Close To Home where the man you sit next to dies, it was terrifying. Reporter 15 the man who died of anthrax was a photo editor there. The man exposed to the disease worked in the mailroom. Coz there was a Huge National fear that anthrax was gonna spread across the country, and theres a particular fear that you could contract anthrax through employees of the National Enquirer. Within a week, we ran a pageone story, bioterrorism attack, that this had occurred to us. Why would they attack American Media . Why would they attack the National Enquirer . Well, its quite simple. Its a piece of americana. Its a populist, patriotic american magazine, and thats what i believe is why we were attacked. Do you fear, though, a tremendous loss of business . Yes, larry, i do. The World Trade Center was attacked. The pentagon was attacked, and American Media was attacked. You, American Media, publisher of these many tabloids, were targeted. I think so, yes. And does the bureau think that . Have the police thought that, or this a david pecker thought . This is a david pecker thought. I feel that we had a bioterrorism attack here. Management decided that we need to be more patriotic. That was the word was used. And to support the war effort that was coming, you know, we needed to show that we were strong. People love to have the patriotic stories on the front, and i think that they had found another nerve that they were hitting on the readership by doing these post9 11 stories. Coz we must have put out probably five special commemorative editions that were slicker and glossier, cause remember, at our bones, were patriotic. Our readers believed in the u. S. Government, just like they believed in america. [ cheers and applause ] from a bodybuilding career, i have gotten a large female following. You know, you have situations where women absolutely, like, take their clothes off in front of you. Like, this woman just took off her clothes and stood there naked, and she says, take me. Oh. Yeah, baby. I mean, sometimes it takes a little bit of respect away that one has for women. [ Speaking Indistinctly ] i first met Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987. I was part of the team that covered his marriage to maria shriver. Arnold wasnt the least bit selfconscious about interacting with the press. He brought maria out of the church on the steps and posed for photographs. He was eating up the press, and we had never encountered a celebrity like it. The downside was arnold was a womanizer. George we would catch him from time to time, and that didnt deter him until he developed political aspirations. On the big screen, hes currently trying to save the human race. In real life, hes happy to limit himself to the 36 Million People of california. Im going to run for governor of the state of california. George so, just as the campaign was gearing up, the reality was, what are we gonna do with all these stories about affairs and his cheating on maria . And david pecker corralled all the bad stories and assured him that during the campaign, he had nothing to worry about. Kelly at the time, American Media was making very highly leveraged deals for things like the joe weider publications, Muscle Fitness magazines that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold, by this time, was on the Board Of Directors at American Media. He was in charge of several of the publications. So arnold came along with the furniture. Arnold was family at that point, and he and david pecker became close friends. [ cheers and applause ] brenna Arnold Schwarzenegger had become forbidden fruit. He was taken off the menu because hed made friends with the management, and if you went against the management, you were out of a job. Which brings us to the concept of catch and kill. There had been stories done on arnold having an affair with this young actress. He was seeing her off and on for 10 years a woman by the name of gigi goyette. Approximately two years after the story was released in the National Enquirer, we got a call from American Media, and they were interested in the rights to my life story, specifically my story with arnold. And i met jerry george. It was a summer afternoon. We sat down at a table, and he pulled out a yellow envelope, legal envelope, with a threepage contract in it. We proposed to her that if she sold us the rights to her story, we ultimately would develop them in terms of a book and possibly a television movie. And he was, like, kind of buttering me up. Like, this is gonna be great. Were gonna do a booksigning tour. Youll go all over the country. Trust us. Sign the rights to your story over. Well take care of you. David pecker decided to buy up her life story, all rights, and American Media took the contract, put it in the safe, closed the door and never moved any further on that project. They didnt want to publish my story. They didnt even want to see the story. They didnt care. That was not their intent. And i was part of it. Not my proudest professional moment, but i was the editor on that, and i executed the contract with her. Unbeknownst to me, it was to silence my story from ever hitting the stands, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor. [ cheers and applause ] if you work hard and if you play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. You can achieve anything. [ cheers and applause ] kelly the public didnt think that the National Enquirer had a Point Of View. They thought the enquirers Point Of View was, cover everybody. Hold truth to power. But i dont think people expected them to be burying stories as part of their political agenda. The public was, in a sense, deceived into not seeing the Point Of View that was really driving a lot of the agenda. I find it very interesting that the same thing that happened to me with American Media also happened with Stormy Daniels and karen mcdougal. Reporter 16 the Mcdougal Story never ran in the tabloid. Cohen says he worked with pecker to bury it. This is about the most powerful people in the country having the ability to silence and change the News Narrative at will. And i think that the public should know that, and, look, ill defer to the electionlaw experts. They say that this is worth scrutinizing. Haberman normally speaking, News Organizations dont get information in order to bury it. Thats whats different here. Youre talking about silencing women and being involved in silencing women with hush payments. That is a whole different order of magnitude that i had never heard of before. I dont know how many of these there are. Those are the ones we know of, but certainly, these were relationships that helped powerful figures maintain their image. And i know some people who work at the National Enquirer, and they are good, solid reporters. Its just that when they veer into other areas like trying to overtly help a Candidate Win the presidency, that is something different. Bernstein when youre talking about the enquirer and youre talking about what happened with donald trump, it is the ultimate corruption. The idea that you would kill a story to help the aspirations of a politician, a businessman, to make money, whatever, it is as corrupt as anything you can do as a journalist, as corrupt as you can be. Kelly david pecker saw trump as somebody he should buddy up to. You know, hey, were both new yorkers. We both have operations in florida. David pecker was known to bump into donald trump in the airport and hitch a ride on his private jet back to new york. Haberman pecker liked Donald Trumps style. I think donald trump liked the ability to be in a publication that people were reading, and there was a symbiosis there. David pecker brought a Silent Editor with him to the enquirer, and it was donald trump. Trump could not only control coverage of his own life, but he could also offer up story ideas on his enemies, and he did so frequently. Its obviously been a very roughandtumble week between you and donald trump. A salacious story about you was published in the National Enquirer. Reporter 17 unsubstantiated stories about ted cruz, including allegations of marital infidelity, and the baseless claim that cruzs father worked with Lee Harvey Oswald in the kennedy assassination. There was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer, which does have credibility. Trump spread those stories to bash his republican rival, all while claiming he had nothing to do with the tabloid behind the allegations. The National Enquirer carved out a stake in the trump candidacy pretty early on. Which meant that a lot of material that they put out was suddenly influencing opinions. And, you know, the National Enquirer in its history has never endorsed a president ial candidate until donald trump . The first time i realized that the National Enquirer had become partisan was years after i left, when i walked into my local supermarket, and i saw the cover, and i had to do a second look. It was a huge story that said how donald trump is going to make America Great again. That is so foreign to anybody who worked at the National Enquirer. That concept that that is a pageone story is ludicrous. And at the same time, every time you saw Hillary Clinton on the cover, she was either all alone, on her way to the hospital, dying. And thats when i went, uhoh. Somethings going on here. Today, the National Enquirer is selling about 150,000 copies, 200,000 copies. So you might ask, why does the National Enquirer have any relevancy in todays world . Theres a very simple reason for that. The National Enquirer, when you think about it, is the most perfectly placed piece of propaganda in america that is seen by 100 Million People a week, probably more. Its right there in your face. Its like buying a banner ad on a highway, except the highway happens to be the conveyor belt. So if you have a political message, its a great place to put it. Regan i think the thing that people dont realize is just how creepy the operations are. I dont think any of us will ever know what really happened between david pecker and donald trump and the deals that were made and the thousands of deals that are made every day by the powerful. Early 2018, American Media published a Tribute Magazine to the crown prince of saudi arabia. George well make it a glossy, and well put the prince on the cover. And it will be a onetimeonly deal, and well rack it at walmart for 13. And well make saudi arabia look like paradise. Wont the saudis like that . Kelly david pecker was no fool. He knew that there was a saudi sovereign investment fund. Perhaps American Media was hoping that they would get a slice of it. The theory and the speculation was everywhere that there was ulterior motives on this, that it was not a straightup, hey, heres a pop figure that will sell like brad pitt or Angelina Jolie or the kardashians, but they were giving him that treatment. I dont think it resonated with middle america, though. So why were they doing it . What is going on here . I dont know. I mean, the two leading theories seem to be that ami is either doing the saudis dirty work, president trumps dirty work, or a combination of the two. Amazon founder jeff bezos accusing the National Enquirer of blackmail and extortion. It is a shocking, a deeply personal post, just published online. Reporter 18 ami attempted to extort and blackmail bezos by threatening to release Compromising Photos and texts between the billionaire and his alleged mistress. Williams claims of extortion, blackmail coming from the worlds richest man. This publication by the National Enquirer might have been politically motivated. Burnett jeff bezos owns the washington post, which the president regularly pillories for its coverage. We have 10 photos of you, jeff bezos, sexual in nature. Carlson in some ways, all publicity is good publicity. Look at all those cameras. Carlson theres also a really bad stench to this thing. Trump is trying to take out bezos bear with a farreaching secret conspiracy. They messed with the wrong guy. Yeah. And they have found that out. This story is the stuff that Tabloid Dreams are made of. What the hell happened . The enquirer got overtaken by Mainstream Media, who outenquired the enquirer in the end, and i think thats where we are. The enquirers been outenquired. Haberman a lot of people used to understand the line between some of the things the National Enquirer does and what the Mainstream Press does, and i think that peoples understanding of that has shrunk. I think it has eroded, and i think that that has all contributed to a bad cycle. Bernstein its almost impossible in our culture today to have a factbased debate. We cannot agree on the facts. That is a terrible place to be. Auletta sometimes we are guilty of enjoying things we shouldnt enjoy, of talking about things we shouldnt be talking about, of claiming something as a fact when its not a fact. So in that sense, we are really children of the National Enquirer. A South Florida holiday tradition is under way tonight in lantana at the headquarters of the National Enquirer tabloid. Newscenter 7s don dare is live in front of what they call the Worlds Largest christmas tree. Don, you really think its the Worlds Largest . I believe it is, sally. The tree is 126 feet high. Thats 12 stories. Brenna in many ways, i want to defend this kind of journalism because it has a place. In other ways, theres a very shameful aspect to it, as well. There was distortion, and there was the degrading of the basic journalistic spirit. Im not happy about what i did, but im not that unhappy, either. I look at this now, and im thinking, man, oh, man. How did we get a Tabloid Subject whos now president of the United States . And do i have any shame in this or potential guilt of my own, you know . This is the world of tabloid. Who the hell knows . Youre not planning strategy. Youre not planning a world game. Hell, youre just trying to get a page one that will sell in the next week. So. What can i say . I was a journalist. Alright, whew baby, youre Clickbait Sittin underneath of my fingers yeah, baby, youre Clickbait Sittin underneath of my fingers point me in your direction you got my, my, my attention baby, youre Clickbait Sittin Underneath Of My Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiingers tomorrow on the whole story. This animal is a symbol of this country. Is it in trouble . Its very much in trouble. In one of the worlds most diverse ecosystems, ivan watson confronts the stark reality of climate change. Humanity is being threatened at a rate which im not sure we really understand. Can Australia Act fast enough to save itself . Were fighting a losing war. Its a fight for our survival. The whole story with Anderson Cooper tomorrow at eight on cnn. Every weekday morning, cnns five things has what you need to get going with your day. And here are five reasons to stream it on max. Its the five Essential Stories of the morning in five minutes or less. You can stream it anywhere, any time. In five minutes or less you can stream it anywhere, anytime well get you up to speed and on with your day. Cnns five things wh