Fantasy in the Weekly World News online tabloid

Tabloid journalism is a banal, but often commercially successful, form of media

communication. (2012:189) This is how S. Miller begins his article about tabloid journalism
in the Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics. He continues on presenting the most important aims of
the tabloids. In his opinion, a tabloids first aim is to inform and entertain its
readership(2012:189). A second important aim is to sell as many newspapers as
possible(2012:189). To attract advertising revenue(2012:189) is the third aim in the order
of importance for a tabloid newspaper. S. Miller analizes the tabloid newspapers from a
reporting poit of view, saying that Tabloid reporting is normally characterized by
sensationalism,

moralism,

overdramatization,

cliches,

and

the

obsession

with

celebrities.(2012:189)
This is also the case of the Weekly World News, a tabloid that incorporates all the
characteristics presented by Miller, but which adds to the sensationalism, overdramatization
and clichs, the use of fantasy in presenting their news. By doing this, they fabricate news that
at first sight attract the audience, but later just entertain them through the obviously
exaggerated and distorted stories used in the article. To show that the Weekly World News is a
tabloid in its majority fictional and that the reporters and their audience are aware that these
news are fictional, I will present some of the philosophies the tabloids editors recognize they
use in order to produce the news and also, the number of fictional articles presented on their
website in one month.
The Weekly World News began its existance as a tabloid newspaper but later became
an exclusively online tabloid. Peter Carlson tells us in his article All the News That Seemed
Unfit to Print, posted on washingtonpost.com, some things about the Weekly World Newss
history. This way we find out that in 1979 Lantana, America's premier tabloid, the National
Enquirer, bought new color presses to replace its old black-and-white presses. Its owner,
Generoso Pope, couldn't bear to leave the old presses idle, so he founded Weekly World News
as a sort of poor man's Enquirer, running celebrity gossip and UFO sightings that didn't quite
meet the Enquirer's high standards. At the beginning, the circulation did not top 200.000, but
this happened only until the arrival of Eddie Clontz, the mad genius who made WWN the
tabloid newspapers we all heard of by following his own philosophy: Don't fact-check your
way out of a good story. Clontz's philosophy of creative credulity led to the publishing of a
great number of stories which were transmitted to the public in the same way they have been

taken from ordinary people, without any verification of the stories. Regarding this way of
publishing news, Clontz told the Philadelphia Inquirer before he died in 2004 that "If we get
a story about a guy who thinks he's a vampire, we will take him at his word." Later, this
philosophy changed, so that Pope and Clontz encouraged their reporters to embellish a bit.
The author of the article also tells us that after this happened, the news continued to change:
The reporters complied and started spicing up stories with lovely details that came straight
from their imaginations. Gradually, true stories became half-true stories, then quarter-true
stories, then . . . Opposed to what we would believe happened to this tabloid, as the stories
got more creative, circulation soared, reaching nearly a million copies a week by the end of
the '80s.
One of the hit stories transformed in news by this tabloid is the Bat Boy story, who
became the tabloid's most beloved character and the subject of an off-Broadway musical.
Peter Carlson tells us that the birth of the Bat Boy happened in 1992, when Dick Kulpa, one
of the WWN employees and graphics genius, was playing around with Photoshop, trying to
turn the picture of a baby into a picture of an alien baby. He gave the kid pointy Spocklike
ears, big wide eyes and fangs. Somebody looked at it and said, "Bat Boy!" and Eddie Clontz
turned to his brother Derek and said: "Do it!" This is how Bat Boy was born, inside the news
room of the WWN, but he soon became not just one of the most beloved characters of the
tabloid, but also a comic strips character, an off-Broadway musical character and lately, the
subject of a book Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed!
This is just one of the proofs that show and sustain the fact that this tabloid is a
specialist in inventing and developing fictional news. From 21 headlines posted on their
website in the passage of one month, from November 13 th to December 13th, only 4 are real,
while the others are fabricated or at least exaggerated.
Some of the news that are obviously fictional are KIM JONG-UN MARRIES MINNIE
MOUSE, ISRAELI MERMAIDS SEEN ONSHORE, GOOGLE STREET VIEW REVEALS E.T.,
KIM KARDASHIAN ON MIDEAST PEACE MISSION, GIANTS ARM FALLS ON CAR, FLU
VICTIMS PUT IN FEDERAL PRISONS, DEATH ZORB or OBAMA ADDS HIMSELF TO
MOUNT RUSHMORE.
In the first headline example, the news, written by Frank Lake on December 13, 2013,
tells us how North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un, was always a big fan of Disney and that he
fell in love with Minnie at the age of 12. In the continuation of the article, the author describes
Kim Jong Uns attitude towards this marriage (happier than anyone had ever seen any leader
of North Korea in over fifty years.), but also the governments reaction towards this

marriage: The government has hired seven women to play Minnie Mouse, Mrs. Kim Jongun: one for each day of the week. We believe that the new leader will never know that Minnie
is really just a woman in costume. Only from these two examples of how this article is
written, we can see that the news is obviously fictional, in a way that even a person who is not
familiar with this subject could realize that everything is made-up. The images accompanying
the article are also representative for the reliability of the news, because all the photographs
are obviously photoshoped.
Another obviously fictional article from the category Don't fact-check your way out
of a good story is ISRAELI MERMAIDS SEEN ONSHORE, where Tap Vann that in Kiryat
Yam, Israel, there are multiple reports of Israeli mermaids coming onshore. From these
multiple reports, the author of the article presents the opinion of one of the citizens, who says
that We are so shocked that they have begun showing up here. They usually observe below
the surface, but we think this year they may be looking to spend the summer with local
residents. In order to make the news more believable, he presents the statement of another
witness, who sustains the previously ones affirmation: Those mermaids are usually so
snobby, always drumming up excitement and then leaving to go back to the depths of the sea
as soon as they get some attention. I hope they choose one or the other before they start
upsetting the locals. What is even more surprising and interesting at the same time about this
article is the fact that the author of the article appeals to the so-called opinion of the town
officials, who reportedly believe what the locals say and even encourage the behavior: town
officials have begun erecting small pools of water in local synagogues in hopes that the
mermaids will feel welcome to spend their holiday with residents. He even quotes some of
these officials, without revealing his source: Well do what it takes to make the merpeople
feel as though they can come together with us as a unified peopleof sorts. This article
sustains very clearly Clontzs philosophy that if a man believes something happened, you
have to believe what he/she says if their story is good and it would make great news.
Another example of fabricated news is the article GIANTS ARM FALLS ON CAR,
where Andy Smith tells us how Russ Tinsley, a citizen of Rockford, Illinois, was surprised by
the falling, apparently from the sky, of a giant green arm on his car, while he was travelling
west on Route 7. To make people believe that what he writes in this article is real, the author
takes into consideration the possibility of people not believing that this is real and contradicts
this possibility by saying that state officials insist that the arm is real and plan to discuss the
matter further in a press conference next week. Moreover, the author quotes the cars owner,
who gives details about the arms characteristics in order to make people think twice before

saying that the news is just a fictional story: Its a big, stinky green arm, man. Like the Jolly
Green Giants arm you know, the guy on the bag of peas? Its awful. Many people were
amazed by it. I just wanted to get to work. This is just another example of how obviously this
type of news is fabricated by the reporters of the WWN, or at least how unconcerned are they
of verifying or consulting reliable sources if they think the news could be a hit just the way it
is.
From the small, but revealing number of articles presented in the paper, we can see
that the Weekly World News is a tabloid predominantly fictional, and this is obvious from the
headlines enumerated earlier, without being necessary to always read the entire articles. What
is paradoxical about this tabloid is the fact that they recognize the fact they fabricate their
news, but at the same time, they call themselves The worlds only reliable news.

Bibliography:
Carlson,

P.,

All

the

News

That

Seemed

Unfit

to

Print,

[available

at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601293_5.html]
Miller, S., Tabloid Journalism, in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition), Elsevier
Inc., 2012

Articles:
KIM

JONG-UN

MARRIES

MINNIE

MOUSE

[available

at

http://weeklyworldnews.com/politics/49837/kim-jong-un-marries-minnie-mouse/]
ISRAELI

MERMAIDS

SEEN

ONSHORE

[available

at

[available

at

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/10925/mermaids-seen-onshore/]
GIANTS

ARM

FALLS

ON

CAR

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/53421/giants-arm-falls-on-car/]