Easing the Sleaze

By Richard Zoglin

By the time Joey Buttafuoco was sentenced to six months in prison for having sex with the teenage girl who later shot his wife, most Americans were probably sick to death of the Amy Fisher story. But for the syndicated magazine show A Current Affair, the courtroom denouement launched the tabloid- TV equivalent of Super Bowl week. When the sentence was announced, the show had cameras at the Buttafuoco home to monitor wife Mary Jo's reaction. When Joey was hauled off to jail, correspondent Steve Dunleavy was there to debrief him. Husband and wife were interviewed separately throughout the week, then brought together for a climactic joint confessional. Conceded Mary Jo: "In my irrational moments, I've blamed him." Offered Joey: "I'm no angel, but I love her with all my heart."

Maybe it's the November ratings "sweeps"; maybe a lunar convergence of high-profile sex-and-crime stories. Whatever the reason, the tabloid shows have been in high gear lately. Charges of child molestation against Michael Jackson, along with his self-proclaimed addiction problem, have sent reporters scurrying across Europe in search of the missing superstar. When River Phoenix died, Hard Copy was the first to tell the world (through an unnamed hospital employee) that the death was probably the result of a drug overdose. John Bobbitt, owner of perhaps the most famous sex organ in America, told his story to American Journal, the newest syndicated magazine show. Inside Edition got an exclusive interview with serial killer David ("Son of Sam") Berkowitz. Hard Copy responded with its own murderer, John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 young boys.

The tabloid shows are the disreputable stepchildren of TV journalism. The Big Three -- A Current Affair, Hard Copy and Inside Edition -- are scorned by mainstream journalists, dismissed by most critics, laughed at by many viewers. Yet when sensational crimes and celebrity scandals grab the nation's attention, these are the shows that do the spadework, uncover the dirt, get the scoops. Their style may be cheesy and their tactics dicey (including liberal use of the checkbook), but they are doing a lot of old-fashioned, roll-up-your-sleeves journalism. What's more, at a time when the network- magazine shows are not only embracing more sensational material but also getting into serious trouble for employing some irresponsible techniques (as in Dateline NBC's use of explosive charges to hype a report on safety problems in General Motors pickup trucks) -- these second-class citizens of the news world believe they can legitimately demand respect.

In any case, they are eagerly seeking it. All three dominant shows are attempting to downplay their sensationalistic aspects and be taken seriously. The main reason can be traced, as usual, to the bottom line: many blue-chip advertisers are reluctant to be associated with sensation-seeking shows, and stations have expressed their concerns to the companies that distribute them. "These programs have never had much of a problem attracting viewers," says John Rohr of Blair Television, which represents local stations. "The problem is selling the ad time."

A Current Affair, the six-year-old pioneer of the genre, whose ratings have been sinking, has been trying to clean up its act for the past couple of seasons. Greg Meidel, president of Twentieth Television, the show's syndicator, admits that in past years the show "stepped over the line of what is in good taste." Now, he says, the emphasis is on harder news -- stories "that you would find on page two or three of any major newspaper." Hard Copy, the four-year-old competitor from Paramount TV, this fall brought in two new executive producers -- both women -- and is emphasizing a broader range of stories, from the Malibu fires to an investigation of animal abuse at a Wisconsin puppy farm. "If you look back at Hard Copy over the years, you'd find a tremendous amount of stories about strippers and the terrible things that happened to them," says co-executive producer Linda Bell Blue. "You won't see them on this show anymore."

Inside Edition, produced by King World, continues to garner the strongest ratings of the three by taking the high road, stressing investigative stories that are sometimes (the show's producers like to point out) pursued later by the network magazine shows. Two months before Dateline NBC ran its report on General Motors' pickup trucks, the same story was covered on Inside Edition -- without the exploding gas tank. The tabloid show also raised questions about the fund-raising activities of TV evangelist Robert Tilton well before the same topic was covered (in considerably more depth) by ABC's PrimeTime Live.

! Which is not to say the tabloids have become clones of 60 Minutes. A typical week on the tabloid-TV beat is a festival of hype and humbug, titillation and voyeurism, hidden cameras and ambush interviews. A Current Affair, still the tawdriest of the trio, recently sent a married couple to a "desert island," where a camera spent the week eavesdropping as the pair tried to work out their love problems. Hard Copy did a story about a deranged woman who was "stalking" Jacqueline Onassis; two weeks later, with a blithe lack of irony, Hard Copy was the stalker, airing hidden-camera footage of her on the anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. Even Inside Edition's vaunted investigative reports all too often dwell on the seamy (organized sex tours to Asia) and the trivial (David Letterman's speeding tickets).

Though the mainstream press increasingly covers such stories, the tabloids play by a different, looser set of rules. For one thing, they are not news shows but unabashed entertainment, with no obligation to cover "important" stories -- only those likely to draw a big audience. For another, they pay for many of their stories. The amounts are escalating sharply. A few years ago, sums of $10,000 or $20,000 were enough to land exclusive interviews with major newsmakers. But Inside Edition reportedly paid $300,000 for the Berkowitz interview. (The money was actually paid to a free-lance producer who arranged the interview, not to Berkowitz.) A Current Affair is believed to have paid the Buttafuocos $500,000 for its weeklong exclusive. Several hundred dollars is the going rate for what one tabloid source describes as "trained seals" -- experts who go on camera to corroborate charges and add credibility.

The free-spending ways of the tabloid shows have had a widespread impact. Network reporters trying to land an interview are now accustomed to fielding one question up front: "How much will you pay?" The networks claim they do not pay for interviews, though tabloid sources insist that such payments are often disguised as "consultant fees" to freelance producers or as purchases of video footage. The tabloids too are suffering the consequences of their checkbook journalism. In the wake of the Michael Jackson child-abuse charges, people started coming out of the woodwork offering dubious tales of other alleged abuse involving the singer -- for a price. "Ironically, even the people who'll say good things about Michael Jackson want to get paid," says a tabloid source.

These shows sometimes draw the line. Hard Copy was offered pictures of River Phoenix in his casket but turned them down. Among the other offers Hard Copy has passed on: $50,000 for an interview with Charles Manson.

Tabloid producers contend that these payments are not as widespread as frequently assumed and that many scoops still come the old-fashioned way -- by hard work. Despite a claim that Hard Copy paid $1,000 for its newsmaking peek last August at a social worker's report on the molestation charge against Jackson, reporter Diane Dimond describes spending three hours in a Santa Monica bar copying every word of the 25-page file in longhand. (She could not legally take away the original, which documented the plaintiff's story.) "I didn't pay one dime on the Jackson story," says Dimond, "and everybody in the world is now following us."

Even when they do pay for stories, tabloid producers insist, the practice is used carefully and does not compromise credibility. Inside Edition anchor Bill O'Reilly argues that paying for interviews is a legitimate way of competing with the networks, whose offer of prime-time national exposure carries more clout. "To level the playing field, we have to offer incentives to some people to come on our air." Some journalistic watchdogs agree that the traditional stigma against pay-for-play reporting may be breaking down -- and for good reason. "It's hard to argue that the ordinary person shouldn't share in the benefit of what's going to be a commercial product," says Everette Dennis, executive director of Columbia University's Freedom Forum Media Studies Center.

Whatever their ethics or methods, the tabloid shows are clearly having a major impact. Parochial crime stories, once confined to the local paper's front page and the 11 o'clock news, now become national obsessions. There's still a major difference between the smash-and-grab tactics of the tabloids and the relatively sober treatment these stories usually get on the networks. But it's no longer possible to deny that the two genres increasingly mirror each other across their divide.

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York