Tabloid

[[File:Globe magazine cover.png|thumb|165px|George Bush's own brain is rumored to be an even more potent drug.]]{{media}}
A '''tabloid''' is a "news"paper that makes you buy it for the [[breasts|tits]] on page three and pictures of Kate Moss snorting [[cocaine]] on the front cover. Tabloids rarely, if ever, tell you any news. Technically, tabloid refers to the size of the paper, which is around half the size of a broadsheet newspaper.  In a few cases, a former broadsheet has been relaunched or made available in a tabloid format, such as ''The Independent'' in the UK.  Most often, however, the term is used to refer to the traditional tabloids which are associated with tabloid journalism or the "gutter press", a cynical and sensationalist approach to news stories, celebrities, and their readers.

==UK tabloids==
[[File:British tabloids - July 5 2011 (cropped).jpg|thumb|British tabloids - July 5 2011]]
The most typical, and arguably most objectionable, of the [[British]] tabloids are the "red tops", so called because the name of the paper invariably appears in a large bright red banner.  An archetypal example is ''[[The Sun]]'', owned by [[Rupert Murdoch]], which is extremely bad yet extremely popular, and is often the one British paper (along with the mildly racist ''[[Daily Mail]]'') to be found outside the UK.  ''The Daily Mirror'' is another popular/[[populist]] red top.  For sheer "tabloidiness", however, nothing is quite as one-track-minded as ''The Star'' or ''The Daily Sport'' — which, for the record, doesn't concentrate on [[sports|sport]], so we'll leave you to guess/Google what it does focus on.  ''The [[News of the World]]'' was a particularly sleazy red top, and another Murdoch property, whose unethical (though probably not atypical) phone-hacking practices brought about its demise in 2011 (see [[the Leveson Inquiry]]).

A rung or two up from the red tops (at least they would like to think so) are tabloids like ''[[The Express]]'' and ''The Daily Mail'', which have pretensions of being respectable family-friendly papers.  This image is somewhat undermined by their focus on so-called "yellow journalism", which favours any story that sells the papers rather than actual accuracy. ''The Express'' in particular is heavily criticised for its overemphasis on [[Princess Diana]], seemingly keeping her on front page life-support years after her death.  The ''Mail'' is also known for its regressive attitudes to such subjects as immigration and multiculturalism.

The core tabloid readership is [[working class]] Britons, though a few rags like the ''Mail'' have middle class aspirations.  Most of the tabloids are [[right-wing|right-leaning]], and openly pro-[[Tory]], though a few like the ''Mirror'' support the [[Labour Party]].  ''The Sun'', a longtime Tory paper, famously switched allegiance during the [[New Labour]] era, running a surprise headline of "''The Sun'' backs Blair" a few weeks before the 1997 election which brought [[Tony Blair]] to power.  In recent years it has crept back to its old pro-[[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] stance.

==Glossies==
[[File:Glossie magazine.jpg|thumb|left|Good, ''solid'' journalism]]

Tabloid-like behaviour is often associated with weekly glossy magazines. Originally, the glossy tabloid market was dominated by ''OK!'' and ''Hello!'' - which famously pay out ''fuckloads'' of cash for wedding photographs. Now they have since been joined by the likes of ''Love It!'' and ''Heat!'', which now battle it out to see how low down the list of fame and importance they can drag up their cover-story celebrities from, how many weeks in a row they can feature the same person without anyone noticing and how inane they can make the Agony Aunt columns. Usually such magazines feature "stories about real people and celebrities", which sort of implies that vaguely famous people aren't actually real (if you want to play a fun semantics game).

==Across the big pond==
[[File:National_Enquirer_cover.jpg|thumb|165px]]
The [[United States]] has its own stable of tabloids with much the same appeal.  The venerable ''[[National Enquirer]]'' and several competitors (strangely enough, now all published by the same company, American Media Inc. (AMI)) cover the celebrity gossip and scandal sheet market.  These include papers named the ''Sun'' and the ''Star'' with apparently no relation to the tabloids of the same names in the U.K., along with the ''Globe''.  Another AMI weekly, the ''[[Weekly World News]]'', went straight for the ridiculous and hilarious with parody stories on [[pseudoscience]], and as a result picked up a readership of young hipsters, but is sadly defunct.

The venerable ''[[New York Post]]'' is a [[New York City]] daily that since its 1976 acquisition by Rupert Murdoch appears to be aping the U.K.'s ''Daily Mail'' in both style and editorial slant.  Even more fringe-right is the weekly borderline-racist and conspiracy theorist ''American Free Press'' from [[Washington, D.C.]].

==The readership: sadistic losers==
[[File:David Pecker.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Pecker: a real dick, also apparently a sadistic loser]]
David Pecker is the co-owner of {{wpl|American Media, Inc.||,}} which publishes supermarket tabloids including as of 2018,  ''Globe'', ''National Enquirer'', ''National Examiner'', and ''Star''. According to Pecker, the readership are basically sadistic losers,<ref name=borchers>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/26/why-the-national-enquirer-loves-trump-and-why-that-matters/ Why the National Enquirer loves Trump — and why that matters] by Callum Borchers (June 26, 2017) ''The Washington Post''.</ref> stating:
{{cquote|Do they care about Tiger Woods? No. Do they play golf? No. But do they want to read about his indiscretions? Yes. Do they want to read that someone who is that successful is now failing? Yes. 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.|||David Pecker<ref name=toobin>[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/the-national-enquirers-fervor-for-trump The National Enquirer’s Fervor for Trump: The tabloid is defined by its predatory spirit. Why has it embraced the President with such sycophantic zeal?] by Jeffrey Toobin (July 3, 2017) ''The New Yorker''.</ref>}}
Pecker is a long-time personal friend of [[Donald Trump|Trump]] who has ensured that Trump is only portrayed in a positive light within his tabloids.<ref name=borchers/><ref name=toobin/>

==The targets==
Tabloids tend to be like [[troll]]s, if you respond in any way to a story they wrote about you (short of a legitimate libel suit), it's all the better for the tabloid.
{{cquote|If the story is just in the tabloids, we tend to ignore it. If you engage in tabloid culture, it will never stop, because the tabloid culture feeds on the conversation. If you respond, they just turn your response into a story. But if the fire jumps the road, and a story gets into the mainstream press, then we deal with it.|||Jon Liebman, CEO of a Hollywood talent management firm<ref name=toobin/>}}

==See also==
*[[Fake news]]

==External links==
*[http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/ Tabloid-Watch]

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Newspapers]]

Categories: Newspapers