really, it was the discovery of how well people had behaved. i think they were less selfish than we are. the bravery was quite extraordinary. [music playing] over a century after the wreck, titanic is still coming up with amazing stories about her passengers and crew. a nurse in the titanic infirmary was ordered into a lifeboat to show passengers the small craft was safe, so she was picked up by the carpathia and became a lucky survivor. then undeterred by the ordeal, she signed on during the first world war with the britannica, an ocean liner converted into a floating hospital. and when it hit a german sea mine, remarkably, the nurse survived the second time. i'm jesse l. martin, thank you for watching. good night. [music playing]

[ static ] ♪ i think you need to look at the "enquirer" in terms of the realm of popular culture rather than in the realm of journalism. i think this is a bad time not just for the press... ...but it's a bad time for the truth.

♪ i just want to start ♪ ♪ a flame in your heart ♪ ♪ ♪ i don't want to set the world on fire ♪ ♪ i just want to start ♪ ♪ a flame in your heart ♪ ♪ in my heart, i have but one desire ♪ ♪ and that one is you ♪ ♪ no other will do ♪ ♪ ba, da, da ♪ ♪ i've lost all ambition for worldly acclaim ♪ ♪ i just want to be the one you love ♪ ♪ and with your admission that you'd feel the same ♪ ♪ i'll have reached the goal i'm dreaming of, believe me ♪

♪ in my heart, i have but one desire ♪ ♪ that one is you ♪ ♪ no other will do ♪ ♪ ♪ lantana, florida, population 7,126, according to the last census, an undistinguished south florida town on us 1 about 10 miles south of palm beach, florida, an unlikely place, you'd think, to be the home of one of america's most successful publishing enterprises, and yet lantana, florida, is the home of the "national enquirer." calder: gene pope was a force of nature. virga: he knew what he wanted to do, and it was that paper, and he wanted to sell the most papers of anybody in the world.

regan: generoso pope very cleverly identified a way to communicate with mass-market america. how he communicated it was studied by others, adopted by others, which set the stage for what was to come. ♪ wallace: and you know as well as i do that there are allegations that mafia money has been behind the "enquirer" since the beginning. right. i've heard. i've read that. calder: generoso pope jr. was the son of generoso pope. ♪ gene pope was born into privilege. his father owned il progresso, an italian-language paper in new york. because of that, he was a huge political figure in america. gene was a child prodigy in many ways. i mean, at 16, he was helping to run il progresso.

his father became one of the most powerful guys in new york. he pretty much controlled the italian vote. along the way, he became a made guy in the mafia. ♪ when his father died, gene was the heir apparent for taking over the newspaper his father owned. pope iii: il progresso was not the kind of newspaper he wanted to do. he wanted to form a newspaper in his own image just like his father had done it. calder: he wanted to buy the "new york enquirer," which was a crappy little paper, mainly racing and sports, but he needed $75,000 to buy it. believe it or not, gene pope's real godfather was the godfather, frank costello, who was a big guy in the mob obviously. pope iii: that's where he got the money, and it was an interest-free loan. why? because he was like family. it's a very italian thing. and that was the start of the "enquirer."

sternig: he immediately put the word "national" on it. he envisioned publishing mounds and mounds and mounds of "national enquirers." he was looking for something to sell more copies. ♪ you're fine ♪ ♪ i want you to be mine, oh ♪ calder: one day, he was driving on one of the new york highways, and there was an accident ahead, and everybody slowed down. they're all rubbernecking, and they're looking at the side of the road. pope iii: and he looked at the crowd, and he saw all these people staring at a really gory scene. ♪ i think you're swell ♪ ♪ come close, hold tight ♪ calder: he went, "my god, nobody's doing pictures of that." ♪ send me ♪ he suddenly realized, "this is what i have to do." ♪ tonight and every night ♪ "i got to make a gore rag." ♪ you're slick ♪ so what he did is that he went to the police department.

he basically got first dibs on the photography of these horrible accidents, and that's how it started. ♪ i think you're ♪ i got to tell you, when i first saw it, sometimes it was hard to pick up. ♪ come close ♪ ♪ hold me tight ♪ ♪ send me ♪ ♪ tonight and every night ♪ ♪ you're slick ♪ but circulation went up dramatically. it took off, but it was a little uncomfortable. he realized that gore was only gonna take him so far. circulation peaked at 1 million, but he dreamed actually of 20 million, by the mid-'60s, many, many people were moving to the suburbs, so they weren't stopping at newsstands, and the idea was, "we've got to get it in front of more people." well, where are the people? narrator: there is madness in the marketplace. just listen to this. [ cash register dings ]

we zeroed in on supermarkets as the one area where i suppose some member of every family unit in the united states comes once a week at least. calder: he wanted to be in racks at the front end of every checkout counter in the united states. people told him, "great idea, but you can't do this. a gore paper, how could that get to supermarkets?" people would throw up just at a time when they were about to buy milk, you know? it was totally impossible. so we drastically in one fell swoop eliminated all the gore. from the moment he started, he never stopped playing with it, trying to change the format to find the winning formula. wallace: in came headlines like these. -celebrity news. -gossip items. -dogs. pets. -diets. -medical-oddity stories. -psychic stories. i happened to discover that jimmy carter had once seen a ufo. ♪

wright: gee-whiz stories. we did one on making cars out of lobsters. we had some guy called up wanting to know where he could buy one. calder: our headlines, our pictures, our front page, and all of them had to be a triggering mechanism to get people's attention first, and if they liked what they saw, they bought it.

regan: generoso pope really understood the psychology of the average american person.

he used to call the reader of the "national enquirer" missy smith in kansas city. wright: she was the standard by which every story in the "national enquirer" was judged. the basic american woman. regan: she was somebody who had family values, who loves stories, loves celebrities and wanted to know essentially that celebrities suffered, too. coz: mrs. smith goes to the beauty parlor, talks to her girlfriends. they were all chatting about celebrities. dolly parton is depressed, or elizabeth taylor got fat again and can't find love. she would go, "ugh," and have to read all about it. we were missy smith in kansas city. i guess i'm a little nosy. we were missy smith in yonkers. they can't print something in there that's not true. we were missy smith everywhere. i just enjoy the headlines. she was our boss. she could make or break us. ♪ ♪

coz: missy smith has had a long week at work. she gets her "national enquirer." she goes home. she has a bath. she has a glass of wine, and she sits down and enjoys herself. i feel a great sadness that i will not be here in this office working on your behalf to achieve those hopes in the next 2 1/2 years. wright: the "enquirer" was a nice window to look through, a pleasant place to go after the harsher news in the real world. ♪ reporter: guns, ammunition, explosives and at least one pipe bomb. [ siren wailing ] brenna: i don't think pope wanted the outside world to spill over into the "enquirer." our philosophy, i guess you'd call it, is basically that, in all the other media, the people are getting all the bad news today.

they're getting swamped with it, inundated with it, and i think they've just about had it. i think they're searching for something that's gonna tell them there's a good side to life. everything isn't bad. auletta: the "national enquirer" was a place where, you know, facts were not important. what was important was eyeballs. the universe that is described in edition after edition of the "national enquirer" is a...nonexistent universe in terms of reality. it's always been fake-ish. in other words, there was a nub of truth to most of the stories that printed. things were exploded. you'd just take a story, and you make it more interesting. you just sensationalize it. that's what tabloids do. wright: generoso pope decided that he wanted to move the "enquirer" out of new york.

and in 1971, we moved to florida. ♪ brenna: walking into the "enquirer" office at that time was through a beautiful, tropical garden. and you walk in to this gigantic newsroom, which is buzzing... [ telephone ringing ] ...editors who are bent over their desks and calling all over the world. is this overseas from melbourne, australia? well, we have some questions on that ufo story. everybody's typing. everybody's furiously on the phone. it was like a journalistic beehive. controlled chaos. [laughing] it really was. virga: rotary phones and ashtrays. brenna: cigarettes and cigars everywhere. god knows why we didn't all have lung cancer, but it was a place that got your adrenaline going.

[ typewriter keys clacking ] it was such a great vibe. it was so exciting. it was so crazy, and you just thought, "maybe i want to be a part of this." [ typewriter keys clacking ] [ telephones ringing, typewriter bell dings ] wallace: the city room has a decidedly fleet street accent. i have but a moment to reach henry green. and why do you liken hoover to a european dictator? okay, john. this is story 207. wallace: pope likes london journalists schooled in scandal and the various successes of the british penny press. ♪ british reporters were a lot more aggressive, a lot more capable of doing unorthodox things. we're guys who were raised on checkbook journalism, underhand tactics, but we were not scumbags. number one under gene pope is iain calder. i was looking for, like, uk-type reporters, and the only reason i needed them

was i couldn't find great reporters in america. we were an uphill battle to try to get them to come and work for the "enquirer." ♪ the reputation of the "enquirer" was terrible. i honestly thought, "would it be easier to tell people i was in prison or a mental hospital for a couple years?" when i first joined the paper, it was kind of a joke, really. we thought they were kind of tacky. coz: i went to harvard to become a writer, and as my mother said, "no way. you can't go from harvard to the 'national enquirer.'" george: the prospect of writing for a national audience was pretty thrilling, i mean, even though it was the "national enquirer." but the reality was different. these people are promising to triple my salary and send me around the world. i need to be... a little bit reckless. ♪ wright: you didn't have to ask to hire a plane or a boat

or a house or anything else. you just did it. george: the owner would hand them bags of money, and they were on a private jet to paris. brenna: maui. george: monaco. wright: puerto vallarta. villa cabamba. we're staying in a luxury hotel, got the penthouse. haley: what about a temple of snakes in india? "can you get out today to hong kong?" ♪ balfour: the world was our oyster. that was the marvelous thing about the "enquirer." brenna: range of stuff was terrific. it was more than any newspaper or magazine that i had worked for ever offered. it was all about the story. get the story and don't come back until you have it. the "national enquirer" at its zenith was a spy network. you couldn't go into hospital

without somebody calling the "enquirer," because they were all getting paid. brenna: the average snitch with just a silly little tip would be getting 300 bucks. if the tip made the cover, it was more like $5,000, $6,000, $10,000. we're talking about big bucks. haberman: i mean, you were not supposed to pay for news. you know, when i was at the "new york post," you would pay for photos, but that's very, very different. a lot of outlets do that. you do not pay for information. coz: the mainstream media went after us saying we paid sources. we said, "yes, we do." listen. if they've got the information, they should be paid for it. ♪ regan: when i started at the "national enquirer" as a reporter, i didn't know very much about the world, and one of the great heartaches of my experience there was to see that if you were famous, if you were rich, if you were a celebrity, that people in your orbit would undoubtedly

one day betray you for money, and the thing that shocked me was that it was always the people close to you who would betray you the most.

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you ready? -showtime. this is gonna be epic. [ barking ] it's what the poster said. do you want to make out or? nope. i meant yes. he's a bon garçon. i give amazing sponge-baths. can i get a room? [ chuckling ] ♪ ♪ chef's kiss.

♪ sternig: i had a story about bob hope, and it was about all of his philandering and some of his mistresses and all this, so i wrote it up. i submitted it. mr. pope got it, and he said to me, "barbara, i don't think america wants to know this about bob hope," and he killed the story. mr. pope killed the story. there had to be some advantage that they would get out of killing a story.

"there's a scandal? there's a negative story? oh, in exchange, we'll do bob hope at home. we'll make a deal with you to do nice stories, and you'll cooperate with us, and we'll take beautiful pictures, and all that other stuff will go away," and then you'd have an ongoing relationship with them. it's like getting them on the hook, and then they have to keep giving you these positive stories. it's protection money, and that's how the mafia works. calder: we were the only people that celebrities had to fear if they did something wrong. they had to worry about the "enquirer" knowing 'cause we knew -- i wouldn't say everything, but we knew a heck of a lot. man #2: okay. all right. we'll see. man #3: and there were several people with him,

and we don't have the information yet as to who... balfour: some of the things that we did to get a story blurred the lines of legality, i would say. i mean, i've done dirty tricks. oh, my lord. brenna: phones were bugged by private detectives employed by the "enquirer." people's mail was sometimes being read, taken out of letter boxes and opened and resealed and what have you. haley: was there things that were done that were questionable, outright illegal? maybe. ♪ i've loved him for nine years! ♪ sternig: elvis was everything to an "enquirer" reader. ♪ balfour: elvis presley could make or break a whole tabloid.

it could make or break a whole tabloid reporter's career. ♪ reporter #2: elvis presley, the longtime king of rock 'n' roll, is dead. i was in the office in 1977 when elvis died. the news broke about 5:00 in the afternoon, and by 5:45, there were six of us on a learjet heading for memphis. there was one extra bag on the plane, and that bag contained $50,000 in cash. we bought up almost everybody. reporter #3: the huge crowds have become steadily bigger throughout the day. the families say they want the funeral to be quiet, to be dignified, and to be a family affair. brenna: pope had a very strange mentality. he wanted to know all the ins and outs of people's deaths. what's the ultimate picture that you're gonna get of elvis? ♪

elvis in the coffin. wright: that was an operation that was highly secret, went on for days and days and days. ♪ coz: so all the relatives were in line at his casket to bid him farewell. we dressed up a portly, older british gentleman as a priest, and he was in line. he got to the casket. and underneath his robe, he had a little miniature camera. [ camera shutter clicks ] but he couldn't get high enough to get the picture, so we didn't have that. one of our photographers saw elvis' cousin going to a local bar. and he followed him in, and as the guy is standing there, he says to him, "how'd you like to make a lot of money?" guy says, "oh, i'd love to make --" he said, "if i gave you a camera, could you get a picture of elvis in his coffin?" "sure." wright: unfortunately, it didn't work the first couple of times, and he had to make excuses to go back and pay his respects over and over again. the first picture is a picture of the guy taking the picture. he had turned it 'round the wrong way.

okay. second one -- picture of the chandelier. i go, "oh, my god." the third one was just brilliant. it was the perfect page-one picture. we sold 6.9 million copies that week. people were stealing copies. this was so huge. ♪ let's go ♪ ♪ ♪ ballroom blitz ♪ sternig: mary jane buys the paper. she gives it to mom. mom gives it to niece. niece gives it to her husband. there were 25 million readers a week. wright: the "enquirer" had so much mail that they had their own zip code -- 33464. calder: thousands and thousands of letters a day. we were bigger than "time" magazine. we were bigger than "newsweek." we sold more copies than anyone else. ♪ oh, yeah ♪ this is your favorite magazine, the "national enquirer." carson: here we go again. ♪ ballroom blitz ♪ at the "national enquirer," we uncover more dirt than anyone

except possibly this hoover cleaner with attached tools and hose. it may even get more dirt than we do. ♪ when we had a major front page and it sold really well, i maybe had 10 minutes of euphoria. then i would remember i had to find a great front page that was gonna sell 4 1/2, 5 million copies. so every single week, it just went on and on and on like that.

reporter #5: when his body was found last week, police said john belushi at the age of only 33 had died of natural causes and that there was no foul play. when somebody dies, it's like, "okay. let's bad-mouth them as much as possible. let's put it in the 'enquirer.'" john belushi dying was a big story, but we always wanted to do the story behind the story. that's what sold papers. so i picked two really great reporters. tony brenna and i, who was my partner in that. i think haley was a very competent journalist, even by "enquirer" standards. we wanted to know what happened that night, and there was this mystery woman whose name wasn't released. they called her cathy silverbags because she sold drugs out of a silver purse. reporter #6: cathy evelyn smith listed her profession as backup singer.

police questioned but then released her. so smith, a 35-year-old rock-'n'-roll groupie, went home to toronto. we then went up to canada to find cathy smith. we spent about 10 days in a hotel room. and the story came in, and i say, "you know, this woman is saying that she killed john belushi. she's not saying it." i said, "i want that headline." i said, "go back and get her to say, 'i killed john belushi,' on tape." so we spent the next week partying with her. we ran up an enormous hotel bill and had a great time and became her best friend. ♪ and she didn't want to say it. haley: tony had a tape reporter going. i had one going. she would say, "yeah. we were responsible for his death, but i -- we can't say that." i said, "oh, come on, catherine. let's get this over with.

you killed the guy, under any circumstance. you shot him up with heroin and cocaine, and he died," and she said, "well, if you want me to say that, i killed him." turn off the tape. brenna: and click. you know, brenna turns his tape off. i leave mine running. so i ended up taping her confessing to the murder. calder: so anyway, they got her to say it. we ran this front-page story, "i killed john belushi." haley: it's the murder confession. it's all the details. she was john belushi's florence nightingale with a needle. well, it's not something cathy smith is going to say. it's not something most people are gonna say, but you say, you know, "you were sort of like a florence nightingale with a needle. that's what you're saying." she says, "yeah. that's right." she was being fed a quote.

that's how it works. ♪ brenna: we knew that what she was saying was gonna be self-incriminating and that she would probably be arrested for it, and she was. ♪ so the prosecutor's office went nuts. reporter #7: in an "enquirer" article written by brenna and haley, smith appears to confess to injecting belushi with a fatal dose of heroin and cocaine. brenna: and for the next six months, i was in front of a grand jury. haley: i mean, this was the first time that "national enquirer" reporters had to show up by subpoena to a grand-jury murder investigation on a major celebrity. it was stressful. i felt that we had crossed the line on that story. we had, uh, gone too far in becoming her friend, and i felt we had sold her out, and i felt that particularly so when she actually went to prison. john belushi's story would be one of the occasions

that got to be ethically challenging. [ crowd cheering ] sternig: becoming a famous celebrity is a trade-off. you want the public to admire you. that's not free. that's not free. you have to give, in return, some access to your life. what you give up is anonymity. ♪ i had a contact in las vegas who tipped me off that cosby was keeping a girl. ♪ and she was a showgirl. ♪ he bought a house for her, and he would go up to vegas and visit her. so i ordered a stakeout, a photographer we had in vegas,

and he caught cosby going into the house, coming out of the house with the girl, kissing her at the door -- all of this. and i had a couple other contacts of mine who were able to confirm this story. ♪ i wrote it up, gave it into my editor. mr. pope saw the story, and he said, "she's got to go and call cosby." ♪ this was the time that he was america's dad. he had "the cosby show" on television. i'd been on the set many times. i interviewed all the other people on there, and i thought, "oh, my god. if i have to call cosby up now --" they said, "you got to call him," so i called him, and he, of course, said, "what's the name of your executive editor?" and i told him, and he said, "what number can i reach him?" i gave him the number. he said, "thank you very much," and he hung up. he proceeded to call iain calder, who cut a deal with cosby to kill my story

in exchange for a couple of sit-down interviews with any reporter except barbara sternig, and that was kind of the end of my relationship with "the cosby show." shipp: for a long time, we killed stories about bill cosby. i got some stories. little starlets who were on his show, they would call in, you know, "he did this. he did that." i would go to my editor, and i would put a lead in about the story, and it gets approved or not approved. i never heard about it again. it was never seen again. you ask about it, and we'll say, "we'll get back to you," but you learned, at least for me early on -- i was brand-new. i'm still trying to prove myself -- you didn't push it. calder: i was making trades that would make our readers happier, but i had to make that decision myself. what's the better stories? we were keen on any story that would sell papers. there's a sort of nasty little characteristic that people have. they get a little jealous of success.

they want to see somebody taken down a peg or two. brenna: it's like in ancient rome, okay? they cheer them when they are famous, and they cheer them when they're doing well, but when things go wrong, they give them the thumbs-down and say, "good riddance. to hell with them."

>> actually he's a color

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and allowed them other hollywood stars. >> and the thought was that he was going to win the democratic nomination he was immediate we, are going to select that only a liter we're going to select a future

regan: it was the heartache and the betrayal, and he's cheating, and they're on ski slopes, and he's bringing the mistress, and the wife is in the hotel room over there. it's a great story, right? everybody loves it. ♪ bernstein: this marla maples- donald trump story

was occurring at the same time that nelson mandela was being released from his years in the south african gulag, an event of tremendous importance to the world. [ cheers and applause ] this was the purest example of the movement from tabloids into the mainstream press. and it also tells us something about donald trump and his rise through the sensationalist press. [ woman speaking indistinctly ] trump: i don't know. lambiet: the biggest tipster ever in the business was donald trump. he would call the tabloids in new york to drop gossip items about himself. woman #2: right. okay. he's had pseudonyms where'd he call and pretend that he was a spokesperson.

he really wanted to be a star. we recognized that donald trump had value to the "national enquirer" because he could sell newspapers. brenna: he's a very, very good snake-oil salesman, and he fit very well with the "enquirer." coz: our readers liked him, so we put a gentleman in charge of him, and the gentleman's name was larry haley, and larry's job was basically to keep track of donald's love life. i was offered the use of his plane from west palm beach to new york and back on the weekends, comps at all the hotels, you name it -- never took one of them. only thing i ever took from him was a can of diet coke at a party at mar-a-lago. ♪

i think that i probably was being looked at like a public-relations operation for him, you know, just by manipulating our interest in his celebrity. and it was the constant, 6:00 a.m. phone calls. you know, i started feeling very quickly that i'm working for this guy, but i'm not being paid by this guy, and i had to remind him i don't work for him. trump married marla, and the two "enquirer" reporters were vip invitees at the wedding. [ crowd cheering ] i'm happy and excited, and it's the wedding of the century. -it'll be good. -thank you, robin. simpson: everybody in the country believes that maybe their relationship could work if this relationship will work, you know, with all the things that they've gone through, and i think this will work. -okay. -i give it four months. [ laughter ] howard! [ camera shutter clicking ] -donald! -donald! ♪ [ camera shutter clicks ]

♪ haley: i was there that night. i was confronted by marla maples, and she was telling me that she had gone after donald and got him, and she was mrs. trump. i said, "well, i can't argue with any of that," but, you know, basically, she disliked me greatly, because of a lot of the stuff we revealed about her. but trump never got upset. even when they were married, as long as it wasn't about him, he was okay. he would throw marla under the bus in a second to not have bad publicity himself and did more than once. reporter #8: the donald-marla affair had everything -- money, power, a blonde bombshell, combined with catchy headlines and family feud. woman #3: are you two back together? well, we are right now, aren't we, hon? um...um... haley: he was a guy we wanted stories from. at the same time, he was studying how we took things, put them into headlines, and sold them to this common-man audience. he wanted to use us as a microphone

to a different group of people. coz: the american public starts to become emotionally attached and wants to see what's happening next with this particular celebrity, and he had crossed that line. people now wanted to know about donald trump. ♪ bernstein: we've always had in this country a kind of seamy underside of the news business. tabloids. you know, there's nothing new about it. exactly. and our agenda at newspapers and magazines is increasingly these guys' agenda. but we all have the same boss. it's the public, and if we continue this columbia school of journalism rhetoric, this rag rhetoric which says, "people shouldn't be reporting that. they shouldn't be jamming this down people's throats." my god, let the public decide. -it's also very -- -let the public decide! walker: you're looking down your nose at the public. the public has a right to know what it wants to know. now, your point's well-taken, but -- we don't all have to be porn publishers.

all right. but why -- no. i don't think that it's porn to publish a story about tonya harding or michael jackson. whoever wants to put that out there to sell papers, what's wrong with it? because if the lowest common denominator is gonna drive the journalistic market, we're in big trouble. -connie chung -- -let him finish. i'll come back to you, mike. -but let me finish. something has tipped. -all right. ♪ coz: people come out and criticize us. they call us lowlifes of journalism, give us obnoxious anecdotal names. we didn't care, and i still don't care. we were very good at what we did. wallace: steve coz has been with the "national enquirer" for 13 years now. a little more than a month ago, he was promoted to executive editor. virga: when steve took over as editor in 1995, it was just new blood willing to listen to new ideas. steve coz brought the "national enquirer" out of the stone age. he brought a lot of credibility to the paper. he didn't look like a scruffy, old guy with a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

he was ivy league, dresses in his little polo shirts. he looks polished. you could have gone to "time" magazine and seen somebody who looked just like steve coz. shipp: the "enquirer," for the most part, was all white people. they had no minorities. they were these old brits and old white guys who didn't see women or minorities of any importance. we had to go in and fight our way. ♪ he encouraged diversity. he encouraged out-of-the-box thinking. he was a person who knew that growth depended on coming of age. ♪ i was brought in to help visualize what black readership would like to see. ♪ it opened up the playing field of who we could go after. it's not the just the same people all the time. oh, yeah! shipp: and oprah winfrey made the difference. she went across all color lines. women bought the "enquirer" more than anybody,

and women loved oprah. oprah was on the cover, gosh, at least once or twice a month. oprah sold a lot of papers. whitney houston sold a lot of papers, not because of her talent but because of her drug use. she became front page. ♪ somebody like michael jackson broke all stereotypes, all color lines, everything. [ cheers and applause ] everybody loved michael. but we started hearing a lot of stories. we have family members that called, close family members that called and told us what was going on with him. so we were able to bring in stories that nobody else had. ♪ haberman: i think the "enquirer" has become an emblem and a symbol for some people of a certain type of journalism in this country. i think it is important to note the "national enquirer" has also gotten some stories really right.

the newspapers used to say, "yeah. you get exclusives, but if we were up against you, face-to-face, mano a mano, we would beat the hell out of you." well, okay. o.j. simpson was the test. on 911 tapes just released last night, o.j. simpson could be heard screaming about a 1993 article in the "national enquirer."

"enquirer" editors say they have been following abuse allegations against the former football superstar since 1989. coz: when the simpson murders occurred, we knew this was a seminal moment for the "national enquirer." we already had huge networks in place in the celebrity community, and this occurred in the middle of one of our networks, so we immediately put every last resource into it. while the "los angeles times" has four reporters working on the o.j. simpson story, the "national enquirer" has a team of more than 20. coz: we were at the crime scene before the coroner arrived there. we brought in freelancers. we went to every single photographer we knew in l.a. and told them that we would pay them any amount of money for any photographs they thought were relevant. we spent easily over $1 million in source and photographic money. the "enquirer's" tentacles were amazing in those days. from florida all the way to l.a.,

we were all involved in that story. reporter #9: homicide detectives expanded the restricted area around nicole simpson's townhouse today. nicole's father, louis, and one of her sisters also arrived and removed some personal belongings. we had a reporter who was in really tight with nicole's family. he was dating both the daughters. haley: we had other people who had contacts with the goldman family, including ron goldman's mother who lived in st. louis. coz: we also had a network into some of o.j. simpson's fellow athletes and, don't forget, o.j. simpson's friends. we had a very good working relationship with the police. we had moles in the prosecutor's office, and we had jailhouse sources, as well. calder: we knew what he was saying. we knew where he went to the bathroom. i mean, we had everything. we had it totally wired from beginning to end, and it sold. everyone in the country was riveted by this. now the "national enquirer" is competing with the mainstream press, often beating rivals to the punch on big headline stories.

a lot of the details that have later turned up in "newsweek" or on other television shows have first been reported in the "enquirer." george: our stories showed more details on that crime than any other publication. we were constantly on it. it was like a soap opera. you just stay on them, and anything you heard today, "what's going on with him now?" haberman: it was a story that riveted the nation. it was one of the first cable-news national melodramas, so people were glued to their television sets, and the "national enquirer," essentially, was a paper version of a tv. people had to follow them. it was impossible to ignore them. tesh: the "enquirer's" coz says not only do readers love their o.j. articles, but their commitment to coverage has brought new respect. this is a fascinating, interesting story. the conventional press has basically come into the tabloid territory, and they've come to appreciate us. ♪

king: bruno magli makes shoes that looked the shoe that they had in court that's involved in this case. i would have never worn those ugly-ass shoes. ♪ "enquirer" reporters were digging out material that the establishment press had missed. haberman: there was a key moment where evidence and the existence of it was broken by the "national enquirer." it had to be followed by most of the major publications in the country. haley: a kid from boulder sends me this polaroid picture of this washed-out chain-link fence and this tiny, little stick figure way in the back, and he says, "maybe you can blow this up and see if o.j.'s wearing the murder shoes," something that the investigators during the murder trial had not done. finding the bruno magli shoes on o.j.'s feet was a mission, and every single person in the newsroom was involved in that to some degree.

coz: o.j. said, "i never wore those ugly-ass things," so we spent three months and tens of thousands of dollars hiring every sports photographer we could to go look through their old negatives. virga: every photographer who shot every nfl game that o.j. had been at, we called one by one, slowly but surely, all of them and asked them to look. ♪ larry haley found the guy. about a thousand cops were trying to link the shoes with o.j. simpson. mainly, they were trying to do it through finding a purchase. they were right there in buffalo. and there wasn't just one of them. there was a whole frame of o.j. simpson walking on the sidelines where you can see that sole that left the footprints in blood around nicole brown's head, right there on that picture. virga: it was like finding the holy grail. it was so exciting. it was like we really did something now

that made a difference. haley: o.j. simpson and his attorneys, when we ran that, were saying that we made this up, that we put the shoes on his feet, right? three other photographers had pictures from the same game of o.j. wearing the same shoes. haley: we also had 33 other pictures taken in two different locations, one in pittsburgh where he was getting his shoes shined after a sideline commentary in the basement of the hotel across from the stadium. that image was used as the major evidence against o.j. simpson. ♪ coz: it won the goldman family and nicole's family the civil trial because o.j. was found guilty based upon that photo of him in the bruno magli shoes. [ cheers and applause ] ♪ those ugly-ass shoes changed the "enquirer" immensely,

because that's one of times that the mainstream media had to give us credit. the mainstream guys suddenly said, "uh-oh. we wish they'd stayed with ufos." ♪ the establishment press finally had to admit that they were being beaten by a sleazy supermarket tabloid. king: why... walter, did you put steve coz and the "national enquirer" among the 25 most influential figures in this country? the "enquirer" has broken a lot of stories. they've changed a lot of the ways they do their reporting and their fact-checking. they've become more respectable, and i think it began to seep in, for better and worse, into the mainstream press, what the tabloids do. so it could have been for worse, too. you could be influential for worse. reporter #10: the line between tabloid and mainstream journalism has become blurred. ♪ you know, everyone talks about the mainstream press

versus the "national enquirer," but you remember, the "national enquirer" is the best-selling weekly in america, so who's defining mainstream? o.j. simpson caused the wheels of traditional journalism to fall off. that's the moment when traditional journalism begins this fast slide into tabloidism.

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and we'd really appreciate the space. man #5: i understand that. we've had 15 cameras following us today. ♪ the "national enquirer" was on this incredible roll. we had o.j. simpson, the jonbenet story, cosby. we had all these great stories. and then in 1997, we have a cover out on the stands which says, "sex-mad di, 'i can't get enough.'" ♪ we didn't have the first pictures of she and dodi together on the boat. another paper had gotten those, so then we bought the second set of pictures of she and dodi on the boat and published them. probably biggest mistake we ever made unknowingly. we closed on a friday night, and we ran it pretty small on the side, and that paper went to press.

♪ and di died that night in the car crash. man #6: the car was traveling extremely fast in an attempt to escape the attentions of the paparazzi, who were on motorcycles or scooters for reasons we don't yet know. reporter #11: the accident happened late at night in a road tunnel in paris. an unconfirmed source from the press association is that diana, princess of wales, has died. ♪ virga: steve was immediately called by cnn, and all -- everybody wanted a comment because they were all saying the paparazzi were chasing them. but because of that headline on the cover, the "enquirer" was pulled

from every newsstand in america. the "enquirer" headquarters in lantana was besieged by crowds and crowds of people accusing us of killing princess diana. ♪ the real cause of her death was the drunken driver of her limousine, but it was enough to get everyone believing that it was the "national enquirer's" fault, and we lost circulation. spencer: this is not a time for recriminations but for sadness. however, i would say that i always believed the press would kill her in the end, but not even i could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in her death, as seems to be the case. it would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of diana's image, has blood on his hands today. ♪

♪ [ indistinct conversations ] clooney: princess di is dead, and who should we see about that? the driver of the car, the paparazzi, or the magazines and papers who purchase these pictures and make bounty hunters out of photographers? then it got very personal. a-listers, like george clooney for example, and others pointing fingers and saying, "steve coz, you have blood on your hands. you're a murderer. you killed the princess." and as for you, mr. coz, and your colleagues, the princess of wales is dead, and you have gone on television, and you have washed your hands, and you have placed blame, and you have deflected responsibility, and yet i wonder how you sleep at night. you should be ashamed. thank you. woman #4: mr. clooney, will there be questions? i'm not going to, thanks. ♪

to blame one institution, i.e. the "national enquirer," for the paparazzis on the planet is ridiculous. the paparazzi started and existed before the "national enquirer" existed. the thirst for private knowledge about the celebrities is what fuels the paparazzis. oh, my god. [ crowd cheering ] we were, you know, award-winning journalism for four years, and now suddenly we were blamed for princess di's death, and i personally was blamed. ♪ ♪ the "national enquirer" and their ilk believe they have a right to intrude on your privacy and to make your private life public. does it sell newspapers? does it sell magazines? of course it does, but what are we doing to ourselves with that, and what are we doing to these people?

♪

enquirer," they flirt constantly with the danger of libel suits. several times a day, executive editor steve coz

consults with the paper's lawyer, a man by the name of david kendall, who also represents the president of the united states. ♪ reporter #12: when are the reports about an official's personal life valid, and what is the impact on the public? woman #5: what did i say to you guys? we're not coming back. move back. reporter #13: have the media gone nuts in covering this story, or is this one of those cases where there is no such thing as too much? ♪ the "enquirer" getting the scoop just weeks after rocking the establishment press by breaking the story of what it called, "jesse jackson's love child." we didn't go after them. we didn't promote them. we didn't stand up for them. we didn't say, "oh, vote for this guy," or, "he's a good guy," or, "he's a bad guy." they went out, and they did things like cheat on their wife and have affairs with interns or whatever. and that's something that we reacted to,

'cause that's something people wanted to read. we didn't say, "oh, he's a democrat. he's a republican. we're not gonna get this one. we'll leave him alone." believe me, if we had had george bush doing blow, we would've done it. that changed when management changed. that changed when david pecker took over. reporter #14: two of the nation's liveliest tabloids, the "national enquirer" and the "star," are being taken over by new owners who want to extend the well-known titles beyond the supermarket. the first time i encountered david pecker was when he arose to the head of a french media company called hachette filipacchi. at that time, they had "car and driver" and "woman's day." his most famous magazine was when he backed jfk jr. in "george" magazine. "george" is a magazine that understands that culture is more powerful than politics. the traditional lines between democrats and republicans are disappearing. the magazine they'll turn to

for a fresh, nonpartisan perspective will be "george." kelly: david pecker insisted that he had to have pictures of himself in with jfk jr. he definitely knew he was latching onto something bigger than himself then. brenna: pecker's a man who wants to drive around in limousines, wants to belong to the best clubs, and wants to be known as a celebrity himself. kelly: david pecker was not a journalist. he was brought into media because of his financial acumen. people would call him a bean counter, for want of a better word, a financial guy. in the cultured, highbrow world of media moguls, he was seen as more of a scrappy, "born in the bronx" kind of guy. i think he probably always felt something of an outsider because of that. he always wanted to be a little grander than he was. auletta: he is a short guy who wanted to be taller, and one of the ways you get taller is by being a friend of powerful people and doing them favors,

or you do it by savaging people and making people fear you, and he's done both. david pecker had designs on this machine called the "national enquirer" early on. he bought the paper in 1999, and the plan was to create a media company to rival "time," something to be at the forefront of mass media in america. that was his goal, and he stated it right out of the gate. coz: he wants to go to an advertising-driven vehicle and polish up the tabloids, make them slicker, make them more new york. he wants to sort of drag this tabloid empire upscale. well, people aren't buying the "national enquirer" to be upscale. the whole idea was a bad idea. he really never wanted to learn what this animal was that was us.

the assets in the "enquirer" were the people who worked there. ♪ and then came the job cuts. you know, he immediately slashed staff. expense accounts were being scrutinized. budgets were slashed. there was less content and more filler. kelly: with the "enquirer," david pecker knew he had a way to reach middle america, flyby america, supermarket america. maybe not as influential as it was years earlier, but it was still a pretty healthy company when he took over. ♪ george: in 2001, david pecker built his ami building, which was always his dream. ♪ and that was pretty quickly followed by 9/11. ♪

that was a confluence of events that changed everything pretty drastically all at the same time. the fbi is searching the site of the first deadly anthrax attack. reporter #15: that building is in boca raton, florida. it houses the company, american media incorporated, which publishes tabloid newspapers, including the "national enquirer." the building was sealed off so that the fbi and the cdc can search the facility, looking at packages and mail that may have been delivered to the building. ♪ virga: you know, the whole world was in trauma over 9/11, and to have a trauma hit like that a month later close to home where the man you sit next to dies, it was terrifying. reporter #15: the man who died of anthrax was a photo editor there. the man exposed to the disease worked in the mailroom. ♪ coz: there was a huge national fear

that anthrax was gonna spread across the country, and there's a particular fear that you could contract anthrax through employees of the "national enquirer." ♪ ♪ within a week, we ran a page-one story, "bio-terrorism attack," that this had occurred to us. why would they attack american media? why would they attack the "national enquirer"? well, it's quite simple. it's a piece of americana. it's a populist, patriotic american magazine, and that's what i believe is why we were attacked. do you fear, though, a tremendous loss of business? yes, larry, i do. the world trade center was attacked. the pentagon was attacked, and american media was attacked. you, american media, publisher of these many tabloids, were targeted. i think so, yes.

and does the bureau think that? have the police thought that, or this a david pecker thought? this is a david pecker thought. i feel that we had a bioterrorism attack here. management decided that we need to be more "patriotic." that was the word was used. and to support the war effort that was coming, you know, we needed to show that we were strong. people love to have the patriotic stories on the front, and i think that they had found another nerve that they were hitting on the readership by doing these post-9/11 stories. coz: we must have put out probably five special commemorative editions that were slicker and glossier, 'cause remember, at our bones, we're patriotic. our readers believed in the u.s. government, just like they believed in america.

[ cheers and applause ] ♪ from a bodybuilding career,

i have gotten a large female following. you know, you have situations where women absolutely, like, take their clothes off in front of you. like, this woman just took off her clothes and stood there naked, and she says, "take me." -oh. -yeah, baby. i mean, sometimes it takes a little bit of respect away that one has for women. [ speaking indistinctly ] i first met arnold schwarzenegger in 1987. i was part of the team that covered his marriage to maria shriver. arnold wasn't the least bit self-conscious about interacting with the press. he brought maria out of the church on the steps and posed for photographs. he was eating up the press, and we had never encountered a celebrity like it. the downside was arnold was a womanizer. george: we would catch him from time to time, and that didn't deter him until he developed political aspirations.

on the big screen, he's currently trying to save the human race. in real life, he's happy to limit himself to the 36 million people of california. i'm going to run for governor of the state of california. george: so, just as the campaign was gearing up, the reality was, what are we gonna do with all these stories about affairs and his cheating on maria? and david pecker corralled all the bad stories and assured him that during the campaign, he had nothing to worry about. kelly: at the time, american media was making very highly leveraged deals for things like the joe weider publications, "muscle & fitness" magazines that featured arnold schwarzenegger. arnold, by this time, was on the board of directors at american media. he was in charge of several of the publications. so arnold came along with the furniture.

arnold was family at that point, and he and david pecker became close friends. [ cheers and applause ] brenna: arnold schwarzenegger had become forbidden fruit. he was taken off the menu because he'd made friends with the management, and if you went against the management, you were out of a job. which brings us to the concept of catch and kill. ♪ there had been stories done on arnold having an affair with this young actress. he was seeing her off and on for 10 years -- a woman by the name of gigi goyette. ♪ approximately two years after the story was released in the "national enquirer," we got a call from american media, and they were interested in the rights to my life story, specifically my story with arnold. and i met jerry george.

it was a summer afternoon. we sat down at a table, and he pulled out a yellow envelope, legal envelope, with a three-page contract in it. we proposed to her that if she sold us the rights to her story, we ultimately would develop them in terms of a book and possibly a television movie. and he was, like, kind of buttering me up. like, "this is gonna be great. we're gonna do a book-signing tour. you'll go all over the country." "trust us. sign the rights to your story over. we'll take care of you." david pecker decided to buy up her life story, all rights, and american media took the contract, put it in the safe, closed the door and never moved any further on that project. they didn't want to publish my story. they didn't even want to see the story. they didn't care. that was not their intent.

and i was part of it. not my proudest professional moment, but i was the editor on that, and i executed the contract with her. unbeknownst to me, it was to silence my story from ever hitting the stands, because arnold schwarzenegger was running for governor. [ cheers and applause ] if you work hard and if you play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. you can achieve anything. [ cheers and applause ] kelly: the public didn't think that the "national enquirer" had a point of view. they thought the "enquirer's" point of view was, "cover everybody. hold truth to power." but i don't think people expected them to be burying stories as part of their political agenda.

the public was, in a sense, deceived into not seeing the point of view that was really driving a lot of the agenda. ♪ ♪ i find it very interesting that the same thing that happened to me with american media also happened with stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. reporter #16: the mcdougal story never ran in the tabloid. cohen says he worked with pecker to bury it... this is about the most powerful people in the country having the ability to silence and change the news narrative at will. and i think that the public should know that, and, look, i'll defer to the election-law experts. they say that this is worth scrutinizing.

haberman: normally speaking, news organizations don't get information in order to bury it. that's what's different here. you're talking about silencing women and being involved in silencing women with hush payments. that is a whole different order of magnitude that i had never heard of before. i don't know how many of these there are. those are the ones we know of, but certainly, these were relationships that helped powerful figures maintain their image. ♪ and i know some people who work at the "national enquirer," and they are good, solid reporters. it's just that when they veer into other areas like trying to overtly help a candidate win the presidency, that is something different. ♪ bernstein: when you're talking about the "enquirer" and you're talking about what happened with donald trump, it is the ultimate corruption. the idea that you would kill a story to help the aspirations of a politician,

a businessman, to make money, whatever, it is as corrupt as anything you can do as a journalist, as corrupt as you can be. ♪ kelly: david pecker saw trump as somebody he should buddy up to. you know, "hey, we're both new yorkers. we both have operations in florida." david pecker was known to bump into donald trump in the airport and hitch a ride on his private jet back to new york. haberman: pecker liked donald trump's style. i think donald trump liked the ability to be in a publication that people were reading, and there was a symbiosis there. ♪ david pecker brought a silent editor with him to the "enquirer," and it was donald trump. trump could not only control coverage of his own life, but he could also offer up story ideas on his enemies, and he did so frequently.

it's obviously been a very rough-and-tumble week between you and donald trump. a salacious story about you was published in the "national enquirer." reporter #17: unsubstantiated stories about ted cruz, including allegations of marital infidelity, and the baseless claim that cruz's father worked with lee harvey oswald in the kennedy assassination. there was a picture on the front page of the "national enquirer," which does have credibility. trump spread those stories to bash his republican rival, all while claiming he had nothing to do with the tabloid behind the allegations. the "national enquirer" carved out a stake in the trump candidacy pretty early on. which meant that a lot of material that they put out was suddenly influencing opinions. and, you know, the "national enquirer" in its history has never endorsed a presidential candidate until donald trump? the first time i realized that the "national enquirer" had become partisan was years after i left, when i walked into my local supermarket, and i saw the cover, and i had to do a second look.

it was a huge story that said how donald trump is going to make america great again. that is so foreign to anybody who worked at the "national enquirer." that concept that that is a page-one story is ludicrous. and at the same time, every time you saw hillary clinton on the cover, she was either all alone, on her way to the hospital, dying. and that's when i went, "uh-oh. something's going on here." ♪ today, the "national enquirer" is selling about 150,000 copies, 200,000 copies. so you might ask, why does the "national enquirer" have any relevancy in today's world? there's a very simple reason for that. the "national enquirer," when you think about it, is the most perfectly placed piece of propaganda in america that is seen by 100 million people a week, probably more. it's right there in your face.

it's like buying a banner ad on a highway, except the highway happens to be the conveyor belt. so if you have a political message, it's a great place to put it. ♪ regan: i think the thing that people don't realize is just how creepy the operations are. i don't think any of us will ever know what really happened between david pecker and donald trump and the deals that were made and the thousands of deals that are made every day by the powerful. ♪ early 2018, american media published a tribute magazine to the crown prince of saudi arabia. george: we'll make it a glossy, and we'll put the prince on the cover. and it will be a one-time-only deal, and we'll rack it at walmart for $13. and we'll make saudi arabia look like paradise.

won't the saudis like that? kelly: david pecker was no fool. he knew that there was a saudi sovereign investment fund. perhaps american media was hoping that they would get a slice of it. the theory and the speculation was everywhere that there was ulterior motives on this, that it was not a straight-up, "hey, here's a pop figure that will sell like brad pitt or angelina jolie or the kardashians," but they were giving him that treatment. i don't think it resonated with middle america, though. so why were they doing it? what is going on here? i don't know. i mean, the two leading theories seem to be that ami is either doing the saudis' dirty work, president trump's dirty work, or a combination of the two. amazon founder jeff bezos accusing the "national enquirer" of blackmail and extortion. it is a shocking, a deeply personal post, just published online.

reporter #18: ami attempted to extort and blackmail bezos by threatening to release compromising photos and texts between the billionaire and his alleged mistress. williams: claims of extortion, blackmail coming from the world's richest man. this publication by the "national enquirer" might have been politically motivated. burnett: jeff bezos owns "the washington post," which the president regularly pillories for its coverage. "we have 10 photos of you, jeff bezos, sexual in nature." carlson: in some ways, all publicity is good publicity. look at all those cameras. carlson: there's also a really bad stench to this thing. trump is trying to take out bezos bear with a far-reaching secret conspiracy. -they messed with the wrong guy. -yeah. and they have found that out. this story is the stuff that tabloid dreams are made of. ♪ what the hell happened? the "enquirer" got overtaken by mainstream media, who out-enquired the "enquirer" in the end, and i think that's where we are. the "enquirer's" been out-enquired. ♪

♪ haberman: a lot of people used to understand the line between some of the things the "national enquirer" does and what the mainstream press does, and i think that people's understanding

of that has shrunk. i think it has eroded, and i think that that has all contributed to a bad cycle. ♪ bernstein: it's almost impossible in our culture today to have a fact-based debate. we cannot agree on the facts. that is a terrible place to be. auletta: sometimes we are guilty of enjoying things we shouldn't enjoy, of talking about things we shouldn't be talking about, of claiming something as a fact when it's not a fact. so in that sense, we are really children of the "national enquirer." ♪ a south florida holiday tradition is under way tonight in lantana at the headquarters of the "national enquirer" tabloid. newscenter 7's don dare is live in front of what they call

the world's largest christmas tree. don, you really think it's the world's largest? i believe it is, sally. the tree is 126 feet high. that's 12 stories... ♪ brenna: in many ways, i want to defend this kind of journalism because it has a place. in other ways, there's a very shameful aspect to it, as well. there was distortion, and there was the degrading of the basic journalistic spirit. i'm not happy about what i did, but i'm not that unhappy, either. i look at this now, and i'm thinking, "man, oh, man. how did we get a tabloid subject who's now president of the united states? and do i have any shame in this or potential guilt of my own,"

you know? this is the world of tabloid. who the hell knows? you're not planning strategy. you're not planning a world game. hell, you're just trying to get a page one that will sell in the next week. so...what can i say? i was a journalist. ♪ ♪ ♪ alright, whew ♪ ♪ baby, you're clickbait sittin' underneath of my fingers ♪ ♪ yeah, baby, you're clickbait sittin' underneath of my ♪ ♪ fingers ♪ ♪ point me in your direction ♪ ♪ you got my, my, my attention ♪ ♪ baby, you're clickbait sittin' underneath of my ♪ ♪ fiiiiiiiiiiiiiingers ♪

tomorrow on the whole story . this animal is a symbol of this country. is it in trouble? it's very much in trouble. in one of the world's most diverse ecosystems, ivan watson confronts the stark reality of climate change. humanity is being threatened at a rate which i'm not sure we really understand. can australia act fast enough to save itself? we're fighting a losing war. it's a fight for our survival. the whole story with anderson cooper tomorrow at eight on cnn. every weekday morning, cnn's five things has what you need to get going with your day. and here are five reasons to stream it on max. it's the five essential stories of the morning in five minutes or less. you can stream it anywhere, any time. in five minutes or less you can stream it anywhere, anytime we'll get you up to speed and on with your day. cnn's five

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