“Clinton and Denise Love Affair Exposed!” the paper announced, “Their Romantic White House Nights.” The headline ran beside a photo of Clinton planting a kiss on the cheek of Denise Rich, ex-wife of Marc Rich, the fugitive financier pardoned by Clinton.
But with the latest “Love Affair” report, the Enquirer may have already squandered its newfound credibility. The report depends entirely on anonymous sources and amounts to a gossipy account that even Geraldo Rivera dismissed as “flimsy.” On Friday, NEWSWEEK’s Jane Spencer talked with National Enquirer Editor Steve Coz about the paper’s latest “scoop,” its new interest in Washington and how he handles his job at the top of journalism’s most prolific rumor mill.
NEWSWEEK: The Enquirer’s cover story relies on ambiguous phrases like “romantic White House nights” and “love affair.” The “nights” it refers to could easily be the routine White House evening events that Denise Rich attended. Does the piece prove there was anything more than a warm friendship?
Steve Coz: The story does not go beyond what the sources say. We have eyewitnesses to affectionate and sexual behavior. They’re hugging and kissing in private moments in the White House, and then they disappear behind closed doors. That’s what our eyewitnesses saw, and that’s what we reported. I think kissing in a romantic fashion and holding hands qualifies as sexual. In the Braswell story, there was a document to be had, so we obtained it. This case was different. We stop when they go off together behind closed doors. Journalist run into problems when the door to private quarters close. That’s as far as we get.
But the article depends entirely on anonymous sources. Isn’t it a problem that no one is willing to put their credibility on the line to substantiate the report?
Remember Deep Throat?
How does the Enquirer’s editorial process work? For example, what happened in your office the day the presidential pardons were announced?
When the pardons came out, there were a few score that Clinton had put through at the very end, outside the Justice Department. We keyed in on those and chose 10 that seemed suspect, just because of the nature of the crime and how the pardons were carried out. We had 12 reporters on the pardon stories, digging up everything they could find. By the end of a week, we found the connection between Braswell’s attorney and Hugh Rodham’s wife. At the end of two weeks, we had the entire Braswell pardon pay-off story nailed down, and then we got the the transfer receipt.
On the Denise Rich story, all of our reporters worked on the investigation, but there were about four journalists working on the final story. As they got further into the general pardon investigation, talking with Denise’s friends, they started uncovering more and more about this very close relationship between Clinton and Denise, that witnesses had seen them hugging, kissing and so on. It wasn’t hard to do. Any publication with a Washington staff-Newsweek, The Washington Post-could have substantiated this story. And I’m sure, as this gets out, you’ll see those publications adding to in the next few days.
Is this recent streak of political scoops part of a conscious effort to shift the editorial direction of the paper away from a focus on Hollywood?
We will always do celebrity news. We have an incredible network of Hollywood reporters, and we’re always going to be on the cutting edge of that. But since Monica [Lewinsky], we’ve been moving toward Washington. What’s happened is that the politicians have become celebrities, and with Clinton in office, there was lots of overlap between those two worlds. He had so much charisma and so much charm, and he brought tons of Hollywood visitors to the White House. Washington has become Hollywood East.
How will Clinton’s departure from the White House affect that?
Look, it’s March, and Clinton is still in all the headlines. He left office two months ago, but people don’t want to let him go. He’s such a celebrity. He’s larger than life-he’s the Tom Cruise of Washington. But they’ve been with him for eight years; they want to stay with him. And it’s not just Clinton. There will always be a scandal in Washington, from Gary Hart to Monica to these pardons. There’s always something, and we will cover it.
Who are the writers and reporters at the National Enquirer?
They’re journalists. Investigative journalists, hired from daily papers across America. Anything from the Miami Herald to the Chicago Tribune to the Los Angeles Times to the Dallas papers. All that we look for is reporters with a strong investigative background. Reporters’ salaries range from $50,000 to over a $100,000.
Where do your story ideas come from? Is it your own investigations, tips, readers?
I would say it’s probably 80 percent tips. We’ve been in business a long time and we have a fantastic Hollywood source network, obviously. We have a decent Washington network, though it’s in its infancy. We also have a good network in New York. Our sources can be anyone, from a publicist to an agent to a waitress to a celebrity. Celebrities have agendas, and oftentimes they want to put a spin on something so they discreetly send a message through the press. We pay sources anything from 50 bucks to-well, there’s really no upper limit. A lot. Over a hundred grand. But in the big stories, in the Jesse Jackson piece and the pardon stories, the principal sources were not paid. In the Denise Rich story, the main sources were not paid.
What are you willing to do that, say, The New York Times or the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets wouldn’t do?
It always comes down to the money issue. We don’t hide the fact that we pay sources. Other newspapers take people out to dinner, they give them a ride to the studio in the limo, they get to sit next to Barbara Walters, they buy pre-existing video, pre-existing documents, pre-existing pictures. But attached to all that is ‘oh but you must give us an interview.’ They hire people as consultants as “60 Minutes” did in the tobacco case. We just pay sources, period. We don’t give them all these fancy consulting titles. And it’s interesting that you say “mainstream media.” We are the number-one-selling weekly newsstand publication in America with a circulation of 2 million. So it’s always an interesting use of language when the media doesn’t include us in the mainstream media. If we’re the number-one-selling weekly newsstand publication, who’s mainstream?
Does anyone ever ask “how do you live with yourself at the end of the day when you make your money by meddling in, and sometimes destroying, people’s lives”? The privacy question is one that everyone has to deal with. You have to deal with it at Newsweek. The line between public and private is a line that the press has to deal with every single day. We deal with it just like the rest of the press deals with it. It’s something we consider. It’s something that all publications consider. There are stories we’ve chosen not to pursue and stories we’ve chosen not to publish. A lot of times, as a journalist, you’re racing down a track, and when you get to the end of the track you call the people involved in your investigation, and other things come to light they you’re not aware of. And then you sit back and think it through long and hard. There have been stories we have not published.
