WP: ‘Catch and kill’ at National Enquirer gives media one last black eye before election

[TomCADem]

You wonder whether there will be any structural changes in the media given how it pretty much gave $2 billion in free media to Trump, thus enabling his candidacy from the get-go.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/%E2%80%98catch-and-kill%E2%80%99-at-national-enquirer-gives-media-one-last-black-eye-before-election/ar-AAjWKNr

In the tabloid business, the practice is called “catch and kill.” That phrase was circulating on Saturday after the Wall Street Journal’s solidly reported story that the National Enquirer — no stranger to checkbook journalism — had laid out $150,000 in August to a former Playboy magazine Playmate, who says she had a lengthy adulterous affair with Donald Trump a decade ago.

The paper paid for exclusive rights to Karen McDougal’s story but never published it, the Journal reported. Thus: catch and kill, otherwise known as trapping a story to keep it out of the public eye, for one reason or another.

The tabloid, run by Trump pal David Pecker, is one of a tiny handful of papers to endorse Trump for president. (The Enquirer’s parent company claims that it paid McDougal not only for rights to an unspecified personal story, but also to write a fitness column.)

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Combine this with the debunked reporting by Fox News of a likely Clinton indictment after the election, and then add in the much-tweeted photo of CNN’s paid pundit Corey Lewandowski shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump’s campaign brass, labeled “teamwork,” and the conclusion is obvious: We’re ending this campaign deep in the journalistic gutter.

[JHan]

1. We need to support those who actually did their job this election:

washington post comes to mind. They've earned my subscription.

[MattP]

2. FBI did a catch and kill for Trump on Russia