National Enquirer antics are not how newspapers behave

I just want the world to know that all this “catch-and-kill” National Enquirer-style of so-called journalism is a disgusting exception, nowhere close to the rule of how newspapers behave.

In my 30-plus years of newspapering, I’ve worked at big dailies and little weeklies and others in between, and I can confidently attest to the fact that I never, ever saw an editor or publisher “buy” the rights to a story, much less buy the right to bury it, as the Enquirer’s Pecker said he did for Donald Trump.

That just doesn’t happen, at least not at any of the reputable newspapers I’ve worked for.

The fact is, the news business has been corrupted by the same forces that corrupt our national politics — money and power. The National Enquirer, I think we can safely say, is as morally bankrupt as a newspaper can get, but there are other, less obvious ways to sell out a newsroom.

Used to be, we had “walls” — between ads and news, to keep advertisers from dictating the news, and between news and opinion, to keep bias out of our reporting. We had news pages, opinion pages, and ads that were stacked and clearly differentiated from the news.

Any of that sound familiar to what you see on your electronic devices today? Seems those hard-copy standards didn’t make the cut when the news went digital.

Of course, it’s different at the smaller newspapers. Small-town operations don’t always have the staff necessary for any kind of separation of duties — such “walls” are out of the question. Again, I can attest to this because, for the past six years, that has been me.

All newspapers, however big or small, run the risk of growing soft in their reporting, partly because it can be good for business. Good-news reporting is good public relations, even if it doesn’t always sell as well as the bad news does.

Let’s be honest, people complain about all the “bad” that gets reported, but that’s actually what they want. Generally speaking, viewers, listeners and readers prefer the juicier stuff: what we in the newsroom used to call “copshop” — the stuff that blotters are made of and just about everybody reads — along with bigger stories of murder and mayhem.

Now that sells newspapers.

Still, restraint is an important part of good reporting. Reporters don’t need to show their audience all the gory details, “sensationalizing” a story just so it’ll get more attention. And while there’s always pressure to get the story out there first, a good reporter knows that getting it right is more important.

Good journalism adheres to certain ethical and professional standards and, in my experience, most journalists take pride in applying those higher standards in their reporting.

But of course, as the National Enquirer has demonstrated, you don’t need any of that to sell papers.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

[email protected]