Which newspaper is the hottest in the US right now? It is not the New York Times, but the National Enquirer.
The Enquirer is a tabloid that features gossip about celebrities and is incapable of appealing to more refined and sophisticated tastes. The mainstream media generally disregards and even scorns its reports. Two recent exclusive items in the Enquirer, however, not only amounted to a crushing defeat for the mainstream media, but in fact caused them to play catch-up.
The first exclusive was that Reverend Jesse Jackson had fathered a love child. Jackson is a senior civil rights leader, has been a US presidential candidate and has also represented the US government in international diplomatic activities. He is well-known both at home and abroad.
More importantly, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Jackson acted as a spiritual counselor for Bill and Hillary Clinton. An Enquirer team spent seven weeks producing an in-depth report that proved Jackson had fathered a child with a Rainbow Coalition staff member [the coalition, founded by Jackson, advocates social, racial and economic justice]. Rumors of the story forced Jackson to issue a public statement before the tabloid was published, confirming the story.
The second Enquirer exclusive was that Hillary Clinton's brother had received a stupendous sum for influencing Bill Clinton's decisions on the issuance of pardons. Before stepping down as president, Clinton pardoned more than 100 criminals. His pardoning of the millionaire Marc Rich created a media furor. The Enquirer unexpectedly blew the lid off an even more startling scoop.
The Enquirer did not discover the Clinton story by chance. After the list of people to receive pardons was announced, a group of reporters from the Enquirer set their sights on 10 people on that list and traced their backgrounds. Eventually they found out that a businessman on the list had paid a US$400,000 to Hillary's younger brother, a lawyer. These reporters also obtained a photocopy of an invoice for US$200,000 remitted from a Canadian bank.
Given the evidence, Hillary's brother decided to return the bribe to the businessman, under pressure from Clinton. The mainstream media felt even more humiliated about this than about Jackson's extramarital relationship. The Enquirer is not only dominating Hollywood, but it has twice captured Washington, where the mainstream media has long dominated.
In the 1970's, the Enquirer once reached a peak circulation of 5 million copies. Although the number has dropped tremendously, it still maintains a circulation of around 2 million. In addition, its editor in chief Steve Coz, a Harvard graduate, firmly believes that Hollywood and Washington are equally significant. As a result, the Enquirer is now hailed as a newspaper that has stood as testimony to Clinton's rule, rather than simply a sensationalistic tabloid.
Of course, the focus of the Enquirer is still on celebrities' secrets. However, the paper's reporters can finally walk with their heads held high now. They have proven that even a tabloid can make politicians tremble with fear and bring mainstream media to their knees.
It was an online paper, the Drudge Report, that first exposed the Lewinsky scandal, turning a nobody, Matt Drudge, into a legendary figure in media circles overnight. Now the Enquirer has also led public debate with two exclusives. In view of such defeats, the mainstream US media needs to engage in some self-examination.
The mainstream media have been swept out of the mainstream in the US. The same will happen in Taiwan sooner or later.
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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