1. The Bezos/National Enquirer business is a reminder that there has been a longstanding affinity between authoritarian politics and gossip mongering tabloids, going back at least a century to William Randolph Hearst.
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2. Hearst of course was accused of "yellow journalism" from the start, but the political salience of that journalism changed. His early sensationalism was in the service of left populism (he was one of few newspaper owners to support Bryan).
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3. The early "yellow journalism" of Hearst was really socially conscience muckraking -- i.e. accounts of exploitation. That changed when Hearst started to move to the right in the 1920s and 1930s & his tabloids then fanned moral panics about sex & drugs.
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4. The Hearst papers and other right-wing outlets (notable Joseph Patterson's New York Daily News) found that reactionary politics & gossip could go hand in hand, with writers like Walter Winchell, Louisa Parsons, and Hedda Hopper regularly smearing the left.
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