National Enquirer CEO Mulls Buying Time Inc.

Mediaite reports:

David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer and a number of other lesser-esteemed rags, is mulling a purchase of Time, Inc., Jeffrey Toobin writes in The New Yorker.

Buried in an extensive profile of Pecker, who has used the National Enquirer to support his longtime friend President Donald Trump, is a noteworthy revelation: that Pecker may bid for Time, Inc., the cash strapped media network boasting Time, People and Fortune amongst its stable of publications.

According to Toobin, “Pecker would almost certainly direct those magazines, and the journalists who work for them, to advance the interests of the President and to damage those of his opponents.”

From the New Yorker article:

Throughout the 2016 Presidential race, the Enquirer embraced Trump with sycophantic fervor. The magazine made its first political endorsement ever, of Trump, last spring. Cover headlines promised, “Donald Trump’s Revenge on Hillary & Her Puppets” and “Top Secret Plan Inside: How Trump Will Win Debate!” The publication trashed Trump’s rivals, running a dubious cover story on Ted Cruz that described him as a philanderer and another highly questionable piece that linked Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It was even tougher on Hillary Clinton, regularly printing such headlines as “ ‘Sociopath’ Hillary Clinton’s Secret Psych Files Exposed!” A 2015 piece began, “Failing health and a deadly thirst for power are driving Hillary Clinton to an early grave, The National Enquirer has learned in a bombshell investigation. The desperate and deteriorating 67-year-old won’t make it to the White House—because she’ll be dead in six months.”

On election eve, the Enquirer offered a special nine-page investigation under the headline “Hillary: Corrupt! Racist! Criminal!” This blatantly skewed coverage continued after Trump took office. Post-election cover stories included “Trump Takes Charge! Success in just 36 days!” and “Proof Obama Wiretapped Trump! Lies, leaks & Illegal Bugging.”

The Washington Post weighs in:



David Pecker, chief executive of the National Enquirer’s parent company, delivered a stunningly candid appraisal of his audience in an interview for the latest issue of the New Yorker. “These are people that live their life failing, so they want to read negative things about people who have gone up and then come down,” Pecker told Jeffrey Toobin.

Pecker basically called his readers a bunch of sadistic losers, which would seem like an imprudent thing to do — if he thought there were any risk of said readers encountering the highbrow New Yorker in the course of their “failing” lives.

The truly gutsy move, it would appear, is for Pecker to ignore the desires of his audience and to continue the National Enquirer’s fawning coverage of President Trump.