LOONY PULITZER PRIZE COMMITTEE: BAWDY NAT. ENQUIRER IS ELIGIBLE FOR A NOM!!!

By Valeria Rotella

When you see the cover of The National Enquirer, it’s like having the crazy lady on the street corner holler at you:  “ASHTON SCARRED FROM LOVE” “MICHELLE OBAMA BOOZE BINGES” “MEDICAL EXPERTS: OPRAH HAS ONLY THREE YEARS TO LIVE!!!”

And do they deliver the hard-hitting, trusted journalism? It’s THE place to read about the lives of celebrities whose personal business doesn’t concern you.  If The National Enquirer is to be considered a legitimate source of information, Brad and Jen must have broken up and gotten back together about 18 times, conceived three love children, and run over a couple of old ladies to avoid getting caught by Angie.

But let’s get real here. We all know that this most of this stuff isn’t true. No one would ever consider this actual news. Right?

Well, apparently, we’re all wrong. The Pulitzer Prize Board has just announced that The National Enquirer is eligible to win their prestigious award in two categories: Investigative Reporting and National News reporting. Both the nominations are for their work on uncovering John Edwards’ affair.

That bears repeating: THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER COULD WIN THE PULITZER PRIZE. This is a newspaper which has only two “newsy” categories on its website (“Celeb News” and “Crime”). It is a newspaper that has been sued for libel countless times, and which uses triple exclamation points in its headlines. And it is in the running for the most prestigious journalistic award in the world, an award craved by thousands of hard-hitting journalists.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Now they’re just giving them away.

The National Enquirer broke the story about John Edwards’ affair and “love child” back in late 2007. At first, they didn’t even say who the woman is or how they got their information. But Edwards continued to vehemently deny the affair throughout his presidential campaign. He didn’t acknowledge the improper relationship until late 2008, and admitted to fathering his mistress’s baby about a month ago. But granted, The National Enquirer’s story was correct. Congrats. One out of the hundreds of stories they print every day was based on actual facts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Edwards was caught. He’s a politician who sold a certain image to the public, and he deceived the American people when this affair was revealed by lying about it. The job of the American media is to monitor our politicians, and to criticize them when they catch them doing something wrong. This is why I can understand the position of Doss Douthat, columnist for the New York Times. “If the supermarket tabloids’ reporters hadn’t gone digging where other journalists declined to even tread, we might have never learned how close the Democratic Party came to nominating a truly disgraceful character to the presidency,” he says. All right then, credit given.

But at the end of the day, the National Enquirer isn’t a newspaper. It’s a “supermarket tabloid” as Douthat himself put it. If you go to their website, there’s a little icon that says, “Got news? We’ll pay BIG BUCKS” which includes a phone number with which to contact them. You could always send in your story in via e-mail as well. The National Enquirer will still pay you the cash.

Paying sources is one of the most degrading things a journalist can do. Not only does it put a taint on your story, but it speaks against the credibility of the person you interviewed and your skill as a reporter. So what does it say about the state of American journalism today if “newspapers” like The National Enquirer, which pay their sources regularly, are eligible for the Pulitzer Prize?

This is my point: over the decades, The National Enquirer has devoted itself to writing stories “exposing” the worst of celebrities’ private lives. Many of thier stories are disgusting, demeaning and of questionable  credibility (I staunchly refuse to believe that Michelle Obama booze binges). But I had no problem with all this, because it’s what tabloids do. But I do have an issue with the possibility that the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a journalist could be given to The National Enquirer. There are reporters out there who devote themselves to bringing the truth to the American people with honor, skill, and ethics.

Now a little plea to the Pulitzer Prize Board: Please, please, please, do not give your prize to a publication whose current front page headline is “ALL NEW: 50 BEST AND WORST BEACH BODIES.”