“The 2016 campaign hadn’t even begun when America’s supermarket tabloids picked their guy. “New Poll: Donald Trump’s The One!” the National Enquirer breathlessly announced in February 2015.”
Jan. 2017: Pravda on the Checkout Line politico.com/magazine/story…
Jan. 2017: Pravda on the Checkout Line politico.com/magazine/story…
“The tabloid treated Hillary Clinton’s White House dream as doomed from the start, the hope of a “desperate and deteriorating” candidate who, depending on which story you read, had only six months to live, or was headed to jail.”
“The tab routinely depicted Clinton as crazed, diseased, near death, an ISIS-supporting traitor, a liar, a blackmailer, corrupt and a member of a crime family.”
“As 2016 began, the tabloids celebrated favorite son Trump at every turn. The Enquirer endorsed him in March 2016—one of vanishingly few publications anywhere to do so—and stacked its pages with praise.”
“This open embrace of a candidate was new, and people noticed, with pieces appearing in New York magazine, the Washington Post, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the Daily Beast and elsewhere.”
“In the weeks since the election, the tabloids have redirected their energy yet again, in a genuinely surprising way: policy. “SUCCESS IN JUST 36 DAYS,” the Enquirer trumpeted in late December, touting a bullet-pointed list of Trump’s policy wins.”
“What is noteworthy is the kind of partisanship the tabloids have exhibited. Their attacks on Trump’s opponents have been...propagandistic in their approach: They’ve followed his lead in constructing blatantly false or half-true assertions & circulating them in banner headlines.”
“The tabs construct wild story after wild story that “entertains, confuses, and overwhelms the audience,” as one recent report described modern Russian propaganda technique.”
“Put (the tabloids) together with the Drudge Report, which has hyped Enquirer stories; Sean Hannity’s program on Fox, which touted an Enquirer story in the late days of the campaign & Breitbart...and you’ve got the makings of a new, all-American misinformation bloc.”
There seems to be much more to the AMI story than just the “catch and kill” stories they did for Trump.
“In 2010, at Cohen’s urging, the Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen’s involvement, the publication began questioning Obama’s birthplace & citizenship.” nationalpost.com/news/world/nat…
