Eddie Clontz Bat Child Found in Cave.

The relationship between truth and reporting has always been a tricky one. No scene remains undistorted as it passes the eye of the beholder, and none reaches the page exactly as it was. But while living with this discrepancy, many journalists struggle with a much baser temptation. What they really want to put into their copy is that extraordinary “fact”, that jaw-dropping story retailed by a single source down a cracking telephone line, which would earn them a banner headline if they could only stand it up.

Eddie Clontz felt this more than most, and he never resisted the temptation. As the deviser and, for 20 years, he editor-in-chief of Weekly World News, his delight was to run the wildest stories he could find. He described himself not as an editor but as a circus-master, drawing readers into his tent with an endless parade of fantasies and freaks.

The News had, and has, an unassuming look, a black-and-white tabloid with blurry graphics that sits at supermarket checkouts across America, among the chewing gum. But its headlines, in inch-high sans serif, are another matter. “Archeologists Find Middle Earth in New Jersey Swamp!” “Seven Congressmen Are Zombies!” “Tiny Terrorists Disguised as Garden Gnomes!” (“These guys are typical al-Qaeda operatives,’ says a top CIA source, ‘with beards down to their belt buckles’.”) Such stories, all from one recent issue, would have made Mr Clontz proud.

The News for which he was hired, in 1981, was a sorry affair, a dumping ground for stories that failed to make the National Enquirer. It had been started mostly to make use of the Enquirer’s old black-and-white presses after the sister-tabloid had gone to color. Mr Clontz shook it up. Out went the tired celebrity gossip; in came space aliens, dinosaurs, giant vegetables, and a “Psychic” column in which his brother Derek would find readers’ car keys. Circulation soared. In a good week, it can reach well over a million.

Two stories in particular got Mr Clontz noticed. In 1988, his organ revealed that “Elvis is alive! (King of Rock ’n’ Roll Faked his Death and is Living in Kalamazoo, Michigan!)”. A few years later, the News reported that a bat boy, with huge ears and amber eyes and “eating his own weight in insects each single day”, had been found by scientists in a cave in West Virginia.

Both items were followed up for years. Elvis went on appearing; Bat Boy escaped, was recaptured by the FBI, fell in love and endorsed Al Gore for president. Readers wrote in with their own sightings, bolstering whatever truth the nation believed was there. In 1993, Mr Clontz dared to kill the resurrected Elvis (“Elvis Dead at 58!”) – only to reveal some time later that his death, too, had been a hoax.

Sheer chance seemed to bring Mr Clontz to this strange outpost of journalism. After dropping out of school at 16 and trying his luck as a scallop fisherman, he became a copy boy on his local paper in North Carolina. He moved next to a Florida paper, and from there to the disreputable corner office in the Enquirer building, in a run-down resort near Palm Beach, from which he was to entertain and terrify America.

His own politics were mysterious. Under the pseudonym “Ed Anger”, he wrote a News column so right-wing that it possibly came from the left. Anger hated foreigners, yoga, whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging, electrocutions and beer. No, Mr Clontz would say, he had no idea who Anger really was. But he was “about as close to him as any human being.”

Mr Clontz also always denied that his staff made the stories up. It was subtler than that. Many tips came from “freelance correspondents” who called in; their stories were “checked”, but never past the point where they might disintegrate. (“We don’t know whether stories are true,” said Mr Clontz, “and we really don’t care.”) The staff also read dozens of respectable newspapers and magazines, antennae alert for the daft and the bizarre. When a nugget was found, Mr Clontz would order them to greater imaginative heights by squirting them with a giant water-pistol.

Yet he also showed care for authenticity. If a story resisted tracking down, he would give it the dateline “Bolivia”. If it relied on “scientific research”, he would make sure the scientists were Bulgarian. Writers who made up the names of Georgia natives terrorized by giant chickens would be asked to check in the telephone book to make sure they did not exist. Loving editorial attention was given to the face of Satan when he appeared in a cloud formation over New York.

The result of this was that many readers appeared to believe Mr Clontz’s stories. Letters poured in, especially from the conservative and rural parts of the country where Ed Anger’s columns struck a chord. If a sensible man like Anger kept company with aliens and 20-pound cucumbers, perhaps those stories too were true. When the News reported the discovery of a hive of baby ghosts, more than a thousand readers wrote in to adopt one. But the saddest tale was of the soldier who wrote, in all seriousness, offering marriage to the two-headed woman.

The Economist

Comprehension

Is it true that… (be ready to justify your viewpoint)

Journalists have always done their best to describe events in the most exact way.	NO
Journalists always hunt for sensations.
Eddie Clontz was the founder of Weekly World News.
Eddie Clontz compared himself to a circus-master.
Weekly World News is a colorful broadsheet newspaper.
In 1981 Weekly World News was not a prosperous newspaper.
In 1988 Eddie Clontz was the first to declare that Elvis was alive.
Mr Clontz had a sound education in journalism.
Mr Clontz belonged to a right-wing party.
Mr Clontz was sure that all the stories published in his newspaper were true.
Mr Clontz was sure that his staff made the stories up.
Mr Clontz did all possible to make his stories trustworthy.
Educated city-dwellers believed Mr Clontz.

• Discuss the following questions

1. What kind of temptation is mentioned in the first passage of the story?

2. What catches the reader’s attention when he looks at the News?

3. Was the News a successful newspaper in 1981?

4. What stories got Mr Clontz noticed?

5. What can you say about Mr Clontz’s political views?

6. What did Mr Clontz do to make his stories “trustworthy”? Did he care about reliability of what he published?

7. What kind of people believed Mr Clontz’s stories?

• Focus on vocabulary

Find Russian equivalents to the following words and expressions:

to remain undistorted
to struggle with a temptation
a jaw-dropping story
a banner headline
an unassuming look
a hoax
disreputable
alert
daft
bizarre
to squirt
to strike a chord
in all seriousness

• Sharing the ideas

1. It’s quite evident that yellow press is popular all over the world. What makes it so popular? What sort of people read tabloids?

2. Some people think that tabloids are useless and even harmful for society. Do you think so? Why? Why not? Should journalists always write the truth? Justify your viewpoint.

Part 2