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Accuracy is certainly an issue. Ross says he treats the Enquirer as a tip sheet, one that's more reliable than an anonymous e-mail but by no means reliable enough to take as truth. Despite having some of the best lawyers in the business, the Enquirer has had its share of libel problems. The tabloid hasn't been successfully sued in more than 30 years, but its lawyers have disposed of a number of disputes without going to trial; even as the tabloid was being feted for its Edwards scoop, it was quietly settling a lawsuit over a 2006 story that claimed Sen. Edward Kennedy had a love child of his own. Still, the Enquirer has surely been right often enough to have earned the attention, if not the approval, of the mainstream media.

Whether it wants that approval is a more complicated matter. The Enquirer appears on one level to enjoy its outsider status: after Edwards, Perel took obvious pleasure in thumbing his nose at the "stodgy elitist guard" of the "clueless" mainstream press, and the paper ran an entire feature lording its scoop over the country's major news organizations. Yet at the same time, the Enquirer has evinced the outsider's craving for respect. The tabloid treats it as news when other media confirm what it has already reported—a tacit acknowledgment that the paper's stories only really become legitimate when they find purchase elsewhere.

Judging by the zeal with which the mainstream media initially went after the Bristol Palin story, the big dogs may finally be losing some of their skittishness about crossing over into tabloid territory. The Internet was buzzing with stories on the Edwards affair for months before the story ever cracked the more venerable publications. As Perel himself wrote in The Huffington Post, Edwards "unwittingly unzipped a new era of how the press will cover scandal and where Americans obtain news." In other words, now that the American public has the blogosphere, it no longer needs the networks and the big papers to tip it off to the latest celebrity scandal.

The irony, though, is that the public may no longer need the Enquirer, either. The Internet, the ideal medium for salacious, unconfirmed gossip, has been eating away at the tabloid's circulation for years. The Edwards story has been a boon, but it's all relative. The week in August that Edwards admitted to the Rielle Hunter affair to ABC, the Enquirer sold 738,000 copies, making it one of the paper's most successful issues of the year—but still a far cry from its average weekly circulation of 1.4 million just five years ago.

David Pecker, the chief executive officer of the Enquirer's publisher, American Media Inc., is in the midst of a desperate bid to refinance the struggling company. If he fails, American Media could very well end up in bankruptcy court. That's a fall from grace that the mainstream media, reeling from its own precipitous drop in readership, will no doubt be more than happy to cover.

Mahler is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author most recently of “The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power.”

© 2008

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  • Posted By: Here we GO @ 10/16/2008 9:03:12 AM

    We must be so blessed to find that most people would like to say they aborted their children. Yeah, I think the IQ has suddenly dropped for CCSEATER2. Fetus is greek for BABY. Does planned parenthood want you to know other slight's of hand? They will be out of a job and you will be sad because you or your girlfriend can not go and kill another baby. Who are you to tell someone to kill their baby? It's similar to someone saying "kill joe" or "kill . . . . (whatever your name is)" You, of all people, don't know what you are talking about. My wife has patient after patient come into her office that are "post-abortion". She works at a university clinic, by the way. The attitudes of these "kids"(Their lack of good decision making has shown their immaturity) is very selfish. They tend to not care about the provider or the nurses who are there to help them deal with their own health. Many of these kids have been seen more than once by my wife about multiple abortions. Did I mention that my own wife is with child also? So these kids come in and say I aborted at such and such weeks...the same week that my wife is in at that time...and my wife wonders....how can anyone abort a child who can hear, kick, pump it's own blood, and respond to light?
    The answer is that the one getting the abortion decides when the child becomes a child. It's sad. Considering that in the future, if they are able to have a baby, they will be at the same term as the aborted baby and will consider it "real" and "their baby" this time because they want to keep it. I know that if my child were "killed" due to an act of created violence toward my wife, I may kill them. I love my unborn child already more than these selfish people love their lives. When you love your life that much it becomes an issue of pride. How selfish. All of this and it's impossible to adopt a child in the U.S.A. Why? Because you are killing them. If you harm any of these little ones, It would be better for you to have a mill stone put around your neck and to be thrown into the sea than for you to face what will come to you later. If you can tell me who's quote that last line was, then you are at least aware of the depth of battle this is.

  • Posted By: sickened @ 09/27/2008 12:18:22 AM

    Enter Your Comment
    Really am I? That's a strange comment from a person who condones a couple selfishly indulging in a sexual act that conceives a child then ripping it from the womb somtimes almost at the point of being born.. There are very few " accidents" If you have unprotected sex the chances are you will get pregnant . That's not an accident. An accident is something that could not have been prevented. If you purposely stick your hand on a hot stove you will get burned . Do you unhook the stove and throw it in the dump because you got burned, or do you have sense enough to not stick your hand on the hot stove? Didn't you learn about cause and effect in grade school? If you indulge in unprotected sex you may get pregnant .So your solution to something that could have been prevented is to dimis something as valuable as a human being? I'd like to ask again what is wrong with just saying I don't want the child and I don't want it to " suck off the tete of free food and housing either so ..... get ready here's an ephany put it up fo adoption for a couple who can't have children of their own and who would support it gladly with their hard earned money. Too much trouble huh? Who's the monster?

  • Posted By: sickened @ 09/27/2008 12:02:44 AM

    Enter Your Comment
    NO WAR IS NOT MURDER, BUT MAYBE YOU WOULD PREFER THAT CERTAIN FACTIONS CAME OVER HERE AND MURDERED MANY MORE THAN WERE MURDERED ON 9/11.

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