Elizabeth Bird is an expert on the media and pop culture, but no subject has gained the University of South Florida anthropology professor more notoriety than the growing influence of supermarket tabloids.
She has spoken about tabloids on the Jenny Jones Show and been written about in the National Enquirer. "News isn't about the words on the page," she says. "It's about what the people do with the words."
In a recent interview with Times staff writer Jay Cridlin, Bird discussed tabloids and the media, and the impact on the American public:
Q: I saw a tabloid headline in the checkout line the other day that said, "Saddam and Osama share Christmas with Shaved Ape Baby." There's so much wrong with that statement, I don't even know where to begin.
A: That was probably the Weekly World News, where you saw that? The Weekly World News was at one time semiserious, in the sense that it positioned itself that this is sort of news that people might believe. But over the years, it's evolved into this complete parody of itself. The market for the Weekly World News these days is predominantly young men - teenage boys and college students. They read it for a laugh and think it's funny, and they feel superior because there are actually stupid people out there who belive all that stuff. But most likely, nobody does.
Q: I would imagine that as outlandish and pervasive as the media is in American society, it can at times be worse in your native England.
A: It's different. People always assume that American tabloids are the same as British tabloids, like the Daily Mirror and the Sun. They look the same, but they're really very different. In American tabloids, you read all this psychic stuff, with aliens and UFOs and ghosts. Whereas Britain is much more into outlandish sex scandals. Some of the British tabloids border on pornography in their discussin of sex scandals.
Q: Did you ever try to convince people not to read tabloids?
A: No. Why would I do that? The crazy ones are just fine. The other ones, like the National Enquirer or the Star, they're no different than People Magazine or Us Magazine. They're basically stories with gossip about celebrities.
Q: Is there anything the mainstream media can learn from tabloid journalism?
A: Sometimes the tabloids can be very persistent, very dogged in their pursuit of a story. They broke the Rush Limbaugh drug addiction story, and I think that's a valid news story. The way they wrote it may have been a little over the top. But I don't think it's unjustified to take someone like him, who holds himself up as this great, wonderful role model, and find that he's been buying vast amounts of drugs, and that he's addicted.
Q: From a PR standpoint, who's worse off: Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, or Kobe Bryant?
A: Oh, Michael Jackson. I think he's the lowest. I think people have reached this point with Michael Jackson where they're just sort of saying, "Eww." I'm not saying it's true or it's not true, but I think the public perception on Michael Jackson is that he's crazy, he's a pedophile, and he's just yucky. I think with Scott Peterson or Kobe Bryant, I think there's still an enormous amount of speculation about what really may have happened.
Q: If your name ever appeared in a tabloid, what would the headline on the story say?
A: It did, actually. What did the story say when they wrote about my book? It was something along the lines of, "Brainy prof says tabloids are good for you." They have me saying things like the National Enquirer was ultimately more important than the New York Times. It was a nice lesson in how tabloid writers work.
