Dish: The Inside Story on the World of Gossip

by Jeannette Walls

  Coz, seizing the opportunity to polish the Enquirer’s reputation, quickly responded by putting up a $100,000 offer for information leading to the arrest of Ennis Cosby’s murderer. Much to Coz’s horror, the Globe followed suit, offering a $200,000 reward. The Cosbys were mortified at having the Globe and Enquirer as their allies. They hired security expert and tabloid foe Gavin de Becker to help them with their dilemma and they demanded that the tabloids rescind their offers. Despite the increased respect for the Enquirer among certain figures in the mainstream news, celebrities continued to loathe it. “My husband and I do not want their money to be associated with our son,” Camille Cosby said. “These publications have lied about me and my family and have enriched their coffers at our expense.”

  Both refused to withdraw their offers. “The reward stands until we talk to Bill Cosby and find out what’s at issue here,” Steve Coz said at the time. “We feel we have handled the Cosby family with respect throughout our coverage,” responded Globe editor Tony Frost. “We were offered the photographs of Ennis Cosby in a pool of blood at the murder scene. A terrible, terrible tragedy. We turned them down. It was totally inappropriate to publish those photographs.”

  A week after the Enquirer offered its reward, a thirty-four-year-old named Chris So called in to say he knew who killed Ennis Cosby. A friend of his, Mikail Markhasev, So later testified, said, “I shot a nigger. It’s all over the news.” So’s testimony led to the conviction of Markhasev. When in July 1998, Mikail Markhasev was convicted of murdering Ennis Cosby in a botched robbery attempt, police said the Enquirer’s tip was crucial. “We will take help wherever we can get it,” said Los Angeles Police Department Commander David Kalish. “We appreciated the National Enquirer’s help. Their reward money was very, very important to us in solving this case.”

  “It was our finest hour,” beamed Coz. “We hope this has ended any anger Camille may have towards us.”

  The “new Enquirer” also found itself in the somewhat ironic role of ombudsman of the tabloid press, castigating its rivals for their journalistic lapses. It particularly found itself at loggerheads with the Globe, which it repeatedly accused of using sleazy tabloid tactics. When Steve Coz saw the May 20, 1997, issue of the Globe, “FRANK CAUGHT CHEATING ON KATHIE LEE WITH BLOND!” his first reaction was professional envy. “Wow,” Coz said to himself, “that’s a great tabloid story!” Then, when the Giffords denied the allegation—”We live in what I call a ‘cash for trash’ society,” Kathie Lee declared in a speech at Marymount College, “where anyone can say anything about you, anything unkind about you, then they’re rewarded for it financially”—the Globe released the videotape of Gifford cavorting with Suzen Johnson. Coz seized the opportunity to moralize. “It’s a major crossing of the line,” said Coz. “We chase celebrities, we chase cheating celebrities. We try to find out what’s going on in Hollywood. We uncover and report the news. We don’t create the news. What happened here is that the Globe commissioned an act of prostitution to entrap Frank Gifford to sell a story which bordered on pornography…. When you do what the Globe has done, you violate the whole journalistic process…. It’s not a question of the tabloid press, it’s a question of the press.”*

  While the Globe’s editors ridiculed such language as shameless posturing—”Sour grapes,” said Globe editor Tony Frost—it seemed to be working. That year, circulation climbed 4 percent—from 2.6 million to 2.7 million. The increase was small, but it was significant—the first time readership had gone up since the early days of the O.J. scandal.

  Coz celebrated the entré of the Enquirer into the mainstream media by hanging four framed magazine covers on the wall of his office. There was a Time cover of a bug-eyed alien, a Newsweek cover with lesbian couple Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher declaring “We’re having a baby,” People magazine’s exposé of “Men Behaving Badly” (Eddie Murphy, Joe and Michael Kennedy, Donald Trump, and Frank Gifford), and the Enquirer’s scoop detailing the confession given by Ennis Cosby’s murderer. Over the four covers Coz hung a sign with the words: “Which one is the tabloid?”

  The Enquirer, Coz was convinced, was on the road to respectability. And so was he. He was writing op-ed pieces for the New York Times and appearing on Sunday morning talk shows along with other media pundits. Time called Coz one of the twenty-five most influential people in the country, and the Enquirer took out full-page ads in the New York Times touting the honor. Reporters were calling the Enquirer for story leads, and citing the tabloid in their articles. Upscale advertisers were even beginning to approach it. Then something happened that would darken the reputation of the National Enquirer and the tabloid press for years to come.

  * In Advertising Age’s cover story survey of more than thirty of the nation’s leading magazines, Oprah Winfrey came in second; Jacqueline Onassis, who died that year, ranked third; Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were fourth; Julia Roberts fifth; President Clinton, sixth; Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley were seventh; Tom Cruise and Roseanne tied for eighth, and Princess Diana came in tenth.

  * There was one tabloid that was even more aggressive than the Globe: News Extra, which was formed by Paul Azaria, the younger brother of the original founder of the Globe. News Extra kept getting sued for increasingly daring stories: Rod Stewart sued over a story alleging that he had cheated on his wife, and Sylvester Stallone sued over an article claiming he had a penile implant after his use of steroids had rendered him impotent. Finally, the tabloid was done in when it ran an article: “New Oprah Shocker! Fiancé Stedman Had Gay Sex with Cousin” in the March 24, 1992. Oprah and Stedman sued for $300 million. A private investigator hired by Winfrey discovered that News Extra had never even interviewed Carlton Jones, Stedman Graham’s gay cousin who had been quoted extensively in the News Extra article. His comments had apparently been stolen from the files of the Globe, which had pursued the story, but had decided that the story was too flimsy and that Carlton Jones wasn’t credible as a source. “The investigator also discovered that the other tabloid plied Jones with liquor and agreed to pay him money in exchange for his statements to the other tabloid,” according to the suit. “Additionally, the other tabloid engaged in tactics such as: asking suggestive and leading questions of interview subjects in an effort to have them provide information which would be embarrassing to Stedman Graham; failing to take minimal steps to corroborate statements made by sources; and failing to determine the veracity and credibility of sources.” Soon after the suit was filed, News Extra fired its entire staff, disconnected its phones, and stopped publishing. No one from the defendant’s side—not even a lawyer—showed up at the trial, and Oprah won the case by default.

  * Several in the Palm Beach area tried to continue the tradition of the world’s tallest Christmas tree, including an entrepreneur who bought Pope’s decorations and erected a 158-foot polyester and steel tree—which was cheaper than importing a real one from the West Coast—and charging $6 to see the display. The operation was a bust, the owner was forced into bankruptcy, and the tradition was discontinued.

  * In a rather ironic twist, Suzen Johnson later sold her story to the National Enquirer. On January 12, 1999, she told the tabloid “I was paid $250,000 to help set up Frank Gifford. I had sex with Frank, and I’d like to tell Kathie Lee: ‘I’m sorry it ever happened.’ ” She then declared that the Globe had tricked her into setting up Gifford. The Globe fired back by publishing copies of the contracts she had signed.

  19

  the tabloid princess

  Tabloid reporter James Whitaker bobbed in a boat called the Fancy 150 yards off the coast of Saint Tropez, watching the woman he had helped become the most famous person in the world. Whitaker, a reporter for the Daily Mirror, had known Princess Diana for nearly twenty years—since she was an anonymous apple-cheeked teenager with dreams of marrying a prince. Whitaker, a dapper dresser with a round, ruddy face and a chipmunk smile, became Diana’s biggest champion; she secretly gave him scoops about herself and he reciprocat
ed with relentlessly adoring coverage. Diana had long since dropped Whitaker as her favorite confidante—he had been “traded up,” he knew, for the more upscale Richard Kay at the Daily Mail—but he was still quite friendly with Diana, and there were those who believed that Whitaker, more than any other person, had launched the remarkable worldwide fame of Princess Diana.

  Whitaker watched with a certain amount of proprietary affection that cloudless Monday in July 1997 as the Princess, dressed in a bold gold jungle print bathing suit and dark sunglasses with gold trim, cavorted on the beach in front of the fleet of journalists and paparazzi offshore. “She was absolutely parading herself,” Whitaker said.

  The Princess’s vacation had been on the front page of every tabloid in London that weekend; “Di and Sleaze Row Tycoon!” the News of the World announced. “Di’s Freebie!” blasted the Sunday Mirror. Diana couldn’t have been surprised that her little holiday was big news: the Princess and her two sons, the heirs to the throne of England, were vacationing with the man who helped topple the conservative government by revealing that he had bribed top Tory officials.

  After about half an hour of being photographed, Diana got into a speed boat and headed out to the Fancy. Clinging to the side of the boat, she giggled and joked with Whitaker, but she also complained about the press. “How long are you going to be here?” Diana asked. The attention was embarrassing, she protested, and her son William “gets really freaked out” by all the photographers. “My sons are always urging me to live abroad and to be less in the public eye,” she said. “Maybe that is what I should do, given the fact that you won’t leave me alone. I understand I have a role to play, but I have to be protective of my boys.” She didn’t speak French, Diana said, so Whitaker and the British journalists were going to have to pass her message on to the French press. “I am going to make an announcement in two weeks that is going to put an end to all this,” she told them, “and boy will you be surprised.”

  Some of the media horde were already surprised by Diana’s behavior. Until that point, she seemed quite happy to be photographed. “She would flash a complicit smile toward the photographers whenever she appeared or left,” one of them said. She had “delighted” the photographers noted Hello! “Aware of the lenses but, for once, totally unfazed by them.” The Princess was so cooperative that at one point, the paparazzi chipped in and bought her one hundred red roses to thank her. Whitaker and others who had covered the Princess for years were less confounded by her behavior; they knew there were times when Diana cooperated with the press, and times when she didn’t. During her Saint Tropez vacation, Diana apparently wanted to be in the papers, and some of the British journalists thought they knew why: although she was no longer married to Charles, Diana was still quite jealous of his longtime mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, whom she blamed for wrecking the marriage. “If there was a good shot of Camilla in the paper looking good and sexy, then you can guarantee that the Princess would be out the next day looking even sexier,” said royal photographer Glenn Harvey, “sort of saying, you know, ‘I’m number one.’ ” The week that Diana spent with the Al Fayeds, Charles was throwing a lavish fiftieth birthday party for Camilla at his Gloucestershire estate. Camilla had gone through a number of makeovers to redeem herself in the eyes of the British people, and she was finally getting a boost in the public opinion polls. London was buzzing with the rumor that Charles was finally going to ask Camilla to marry him—which Diana bitterly opposed. The thought of her rival, gussied up and grinning on the arm of Charles on the front of London’s tabloids, infuriated Diana. The Princess knew that her vacation with Mohammed Al Fayed was guaranteed front-page news.

  “She drove Camilla to the back of the papers,” marveled Whitaker. Princess Diana had, once again, won the public relations battle.

  Princess Diana—contrary to her brother’s famous “blood on their hands” speech—was never “baffled” by the tabloids. She lived by them. “I read everything that’s written about me,” she once told Lady Colin Campbell. Every morning, she pored over the papers, studying each article about her, every photograph taken of her, and all the press devoted to her enemies and rivals. “If the stories were positive, she was ecstatic,” according to a member of her household staff, “but if they were negative she would tailspin and bemoan the cruelties of the world. Then she’d hit the telephone and make sure that the journalists she had in her pocket put her side of whatever story she felt needed to be respun in the following day’s papers.”

  Those reporters “in her pocket” felt that Diana was justified; the Princess was engaged in a public relations war, with both sides leaking to their allies in the media. Diana was much better at it than Charles and his side were. “She may have been tricky, contrary and manipulative at times,” Whitaker said, “and why not after what she had been put through in life?”

  Whitaker had good reason to be defensive about the Princess. He had, some might say, discovered her. Actually, it was she who discovered him. One day in 1978—when the only royal story of interest was who Prince Charles would marry and Whitaker was one of about seven royal reporters following the story—Diana Spencer walked up to Whitaker outside Buckingham Palace and introduced herself. “I know you,” Diana said playfully. “You’re the wicked Mr. Whitaker, aren’t you? I’m Diana.” Whitaker, who wrote for the Star back then, spotted Diana again several months later, fishing on the River Dee with Prince Charles. When Diana saw the royal press pack, she scampered off and hid behind a tree. She delighted the reporters, however, by spying on them, using a makeup mirror as a periscope. “What a cunning lady,” Whitaker thought. “This one is going to give us a lot of trouble if she is indeed the new girl in the life of Prince Charles.”

  Whitaker and others covering Prince Charles became enchanted with Diana. “She was delightful,” said Whitaker. “She was immensely flirtatious…. And she did definitely seduce the media that were with her.” Diana became friendly with the reporters, greeting each of them by name. She was, according to Whitaker and others who covered her then, never shy. “‘Shy Di’ ” was always a silly tabloid cliché that made headline writing easy,” said Whitaker. “She was a girl with a lot of guts.”

  Some were a tad more cynical than Whitaker about Diana’s “friendship.” “I always thought that she had a very well-developed native cunning,” said photographer Harry Arnold. “She knew how to manipulate men quite early on in terms of looking at them in a certain way and making them feel special and using a little phrase now and again. And she did it with all of us.”

  “I had to court them. Make them like me. Make them my friends,” Diana later said. “I may have been only nineteen, but I wasn’t stupid.” Behind his back, Diana called Whitaker the Fat Red Tomato.

  She joked with Sun photographer Arthur Edwards about giving him a knighthood if she ever became queen. Edwards never took her attention personally. “The reason is most likely that thirteen million readers will see her at her gorgeous best,” he said. “Funnily enough, it is always the papers with the highest circulation to whom Diana is the most cooperative.”

  One day, Whitaker, worried about the effects of the media glare on the young woman, wrote Diana a note:

  This is to say that we, all of us in Fleet Street, love you very much. If ever we do anything that upsets you—which, of course, will happen—we are very sorry … Keep your chin up and keep going.

  Two days later, Diana approached the crowd of photographers and reporters waiting outside her apartment. “Please leave me alone for a second,” she said. “I want to speak to Mr. Whitaker in private.” Diana asked for his advice in dealing with the press and he counseled her. She began calling Whitaker daily, planting certain stories, killing others.

  Whitaker used the Star shamelessly to lobby for the Princess. When word circulated that Diana’s past might not be as pristine as the tabloids had made it out to be, Whitaker ran an interview with Diana’s uncle, declaring—inaccurately, it appears—that she was a virgin. When the Mi
rror ran a sensational article claiming Diana had spent the night on a train with Charles, Whitaker ran a story refuting it. “I just didn’t want this romance to go wrong,” Whitaker said. “I wanted her to marry him because I thought it would be good for everyone.”

  One day Whitaker advised Diana to be less forthcoming with reporters. “Look, Diana, if you go on talking to the press as much as you have done lately you can only damage any chance you might have of marrying Charles,” he told her. Other would-be Princesses had been dropped by the Prince for talking too much. “It is not liked by the Royal Family and I urge you to stop. There will be times when I will ask you a question to which I need an answer desperately. I am telling you now, don’t answer me. I know I am cutting my own throat, but I believe that marrying Prince Charles is very much more important than me writing another exclusive.” After that, all of Diana’s conversations with reporters were off the record. “She was a brilliant operator,” said Whitaker.