How The National Enquirer Vets Gay Sex Stories

Matthew Fleischer — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:19:57 +0000

Obviously intrigued by the glut of John Travolta gay-masseuse-sex stories coming out in the tabloids as of late, Gawker’s Maureen O’Connor decided to look into the National Enquirer‘s fact-checking processes. Though she spoke to a few staffers at the Enquirer and its sister tabloid Star who admitted many of their stories were utterly wrong, she seems to have come away impressed with the rigor involved in going after big scoops like the Travolta stories. Sources touting scandalous revelations are routinely given polygraph tests by a former FBI interrogator. No joke.

Writes O’Connor:

“The polygraph is an insurance policy that our lawyers like,” Star editor James Heidenry explained to me. Star‘s third editor-in-chief in little over a year, Heidenry was not on staff during Mr. Clean’s negotiation, but spoke broadly about the magazine’s tactics. “We like to get them too, to be confident with the story and reach a comfort level with it, and to protect ourselves against legal action.” If a story failed the polygraph test, “we would ditch it,” he concluded.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Why Do White Nationalist Writers Have a Home at Marketwatch?

Matthew Fleischer — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:09:16 +0000

In the past week, not one but two writers, Robert Weissberg and John Derbyshire, were fired from the conservative magazine National Review for being overtly racist. The former was canned for participating in a white supremacist conference in Tennessee, while the latter got axed for penning a column that, among other choice nuggets of wisdom, advised white young adults, “If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.”

The very public sackings turned into a feel good story for most of the non-racist world, and led The Atlantic to boast that “people who make a living off being racist…are [an] endangered species.”

But are they? Marketwatch, owned by Dow Jones, employs not one, but two contributors to the white nationalist site VDare. And neither seems to be in danger of losing their jobs. The first is Peter Brimelow, the editor of VDare who we’ve written about on this site before. Brimelow was fired from the NR in 1998 for his racist views. But that didn’t stop him from becoming a financial correspondent for Marketwatch–all-the-while he continuing his white nationalist propaganda on VDare.

Brimelow isn’t the only VDare contributor writing for Marketwatch. He’s joined by economic consultant Edwin Rubenstein, who also moonlights as an analyst for the National Policy Institute–an organization that aspires to “elevate the consciousness of whites, ensure our biological and cultural continuity, and protect our civil rights.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Maureen O’Connor - FishbowlLA

How The National Enquirer Vets Gay Sex Stories

Why Do White Nationalist Writers Have a Home at Marketwatch?