The anatomy of a tabloid scandal
Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 06:58AM Here's an interesting little case study on how tabloids can drive newscoverage. Sometimes.
Yesterday, the National Enquirer broke a story alleging to have caught former Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards in a tryst with the mother of his lovechild. Keep in mind it's the National Enquirer, but it's a fairly detailed and a seemingly plausible story.
Matt Drudge immediately linked to the story and posted above the fold. So, we can be sure that milions of people -- including every producer and print reporter in the known world -- has seen the Enquirer story.
If you search google news for John Edwards, however, the only references to this Enquirer story are from online media -- Blogger News Network, Gawker, Outside the Beltway, etc. No mainstream media has yet picked it up, maybe because they're uncomfortable citing the Enquirer (though that hasn't stopped them in the past), or possibly because it's not deemed newsworthy since he's no longer a candidate for anything. That could change, of course, if Edwards were to make it onto Obama's Veep shortlist.
It'll be interesting to see if these story bubbles over to the MSM. My guess is that the New York Post's Page 6 will provide the missing link.
Reader Comments (2)
Funny enough, I was helping with a case study not too long ago that is similar in news style delivery... a woman was arrested in a Mc Donald's drive thru in my homestate of Florida, and only a few aritcles wrote about it, using appeals to emotion to draw sympathy to the 'grandmother.' The story BLEW UP on blogs, to the point where police stations were fielding hundreds of angry calls and letters from all over the nation. Angry mothers were posting on their blogs about it, 'pig haters' were writing call-to-action letters.... What really sucks is that the police force's communications office was out of town (memorial weekend I believe), and didn't have the chance to defend the claims before the one or two stories went to print. It turned out the police were actually in the right in the situation, contrary to what was initially reported (the woman had a past of crazy events), but the damage was already done. The mayor of the town had even released a public apology (he was up for re-election), which made the police force pissed. Interesting case showing the power of blogs. The original news story title was "Grandmother Arrested At McDonald's Drive-Thru For Not Pulling Car Forward," which eventually was somewhat corrected... http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/22/Northpinellas/Flip_side_is_told_in_.shtml
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