The Enquirer’s recent front page article alleging that British Prime Minister Tony Blair fathered the child of alleged Abu Ghraib prison sadist, PFC Lyndie England, raised several compelling issues of journalistic practice.
The mere placement of the article as lead story -- ahead of a piece detailing Rupert Murdoch’s test of a thermonuclear device on American soil that reduced the number of states to forty-seven -- bitterly divided the newsroom into rival camps. The Public Editor chose to sit out the debate in an effort to avoid being reviled throughout the newsroom, as was the case at the New York Times.
However, the Blair article’s 25-point, red headline with yellow drop shadow (“BRIT PM DOES IT FOR ENGLAND”) was too troublesome for this space to let pass. Aside from being presumptuously editorial (nowhere in the body of the 585-column inch article was there a quotation from Ms. England detailing her feelings for Mr. Blair), the headline neglected guidelines set forth in the Enquirer Style Book. Therein is explicitly stated that such headlines only accompany articles featuring “the most attractive of international figures nailed in the most titillating acts of vomit-on-the-check-out-line depravity.”
The Public Editor should not and will not make judgments on what the editorial staff deems “attractive.” However, the particulars of the Blair/England affair call into question the issue of “depravity.”
Enquirer copy desk chief Cinch White purports to having been of two minds vis a vis the headline: “On one hand, the story dished on two totally not hot-looking people carrying on with little of the lewdness we like under that kind of headline. On the other hand, you got the Prime Minister of a country involved in the war in Iraq, involved with one of juiciest players in that very same war. So, at worst, it was, like, a judgment call.”
The Public Editor agreed it was a judgment call but disagreed with the judgment, postulating that, when in doubt, a less shrill headline allows the reader to draw his own conclusions as to newsworthiness.
Mr. White dutifully considered this point before lacerating The Public Editor’s scalp with a pica ruler.
Moving on to the article’s second paragraph, the Enquirer quoted “an official of a discount crystal meth lab outside Tulsa” who revealed that Mr. Blair and Ms. England were first seen together while the Prime Minister was “on a tour of the Abu Ghraib weight room just after the fall of Baghdad.”
The Public Editor feels that, in a not-for-direct-attribution quotation, some indication of how senior the official of the methamphetamine lab was, would have obviated any doubts as to the credibility of the source. Dash Jamison, assistant managing editor of The Enquirer’s infidelity desk, rebuked this suggestion, citing that both the source and his quotes were fabricated by journalist and hence, immune to standard journalistic practice.
In support of his assertion, Mr. Jamison cited an article from May 2003, in which the Enquirer reported the Dalai Lama’s four-week stay at the Hazelden Rehab Clinic in Minnesota. Mr. Jamison pointed out that the source of the article, identified only as “a guy from Asia,” has never been compromised and “is still, to this day, Asian.”
Satisfied with the explanation, The Public Editor nevertheless challenged a second quotation from the same anonymous official: “‘After she completed three reps of bench-pressing a 135-pound Iraqi shoe salesman, Lyndie was allover the Prime Minister,’ drooled the official.
The Public Editor felt that the verb “drooled” interjected a needlessly distracting visual element to the statement while betraying a censorial tone on the part of the reporter. The Public Editor would have preferred use of the verb “said.”
Mr. Jamison, claiming to be “sick of this bullshit,” pawned off The Public Editor to Click Peabody, chief of the Enquirer’s Jennifer Aniston Bureau. Peabody in turn, passed The Public Editor on to Ezra Flood, the man responsible for tying string around bales of Enquirer issues in preparation for delivery. Mr. Flood felt the word “drooled” was vitiated by a quotation in paragraph eight: “A source who hates Mr. Blair’s guts told THE ENQUIRER that the Prime Minister had confidentially described Ms. England as ‘a jolly [fat-assed] young [bitch] with a rather splendid [do-me-now] smile.’”
The Public Editor agreed but countered that the quotation should have run higher up in the piece – paragraph three, ideally -- along with a notation that the Enquirer attempted to get corroboration from The Prime Minister.
(Note: A similarly second-hand statement from Ms. England regarding her support of the Iraqi Governing Council’s enactment of a nationwide leash law, correctly included a caveat reading, “Ms. England returned a call from the Enquirer but no one was in the mood to talk to the little skank.”)
The Public Editor, just before putting this column “to bed,” bumped into the writer of the Blair article, Alden Newhouse, who was rewarded the Iraqi War assignment based upon his earlier four-part series divulging that Lance Armstrong’s cancer was actually just a twisted ankle.
Mr. Newhouse patiently listened to the above-mentioned cavils regarding his reportage, then negotiated a maneuver with his lap top which resulted in The Public Editor’s admittance the blunt force trauma unit of Miami-Dade Medical Center.
After a two-week hiatus, The Public Editor column will return to explore the fine line between news analysis and advocacy journalism in The Enquirer’s extended coverage of Joan Rivers’ thirty-five year struggle with Post-Partum Depression.
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